Commencing with a short background of the history of sociological research on emotions, and defining the concept of emotion in an interdisciplinary context, this lecture will critically explore the often used dichotomy between emotion and reason. In recent decades, there has been a re-evaluation of the role of emotions in social life and social science, to the extent that scholars often talk of an ‘emotional turn’. The main focus will be on theorizing rational decision-making as an emotive-cognitive process using legal decision-making as a case in point.

Bio

Stina Bergman Blix' research concerns the sociology of emotions and her theoretical interest includes rationality, decision making, professionalization and the private/professional interface. Her latest projects investigate emotions in court from several perspectives: their role in and around court hearings, and how objectivity is constructed in legal decision-making. She leads the ERC-project JUSTEMOTIONS (2018-2023) and coordinates the Research Group Emotion-Justice-Interaction (EmoJI). (source)

This lecture will address how individuals perceive, understand and act in the social world. I will argue that the traditional notion of rational choice needs to be expanded by the idea that individual also draw on their subjective experiences and feelings when making judgments and decisions.  This point will be illustrated by empirical examples from work on (i) influence of affective states on risky decision making, (ii) influence of processing effort on evaluations of faces, and (iii) influence of bodily states on conceptual understanding.  Overall, I will argue that people use a variety of rational and non-rational cues to understand their social world.

Bio

Prof. Winkielman (UC San Diego) studies the interplay between emotion, cognition, embodiment and consciousness, particularly in the domain of social cognition.  Specifically, he is exploring unconscious affect, affective influences on decisions, and embodiment of affective processing.  He is also investigating the role of cognitive feelings, such as processing fluency or recall difficulty in a variety of judgments, ranging from attractiveness to memory. His work draws on a variety of psychological methods, including those of social neuroscience. (source)

Decisions are a fundamental part of life. We believe to be rational and pondered, yet, current literature in behavioural and organizational decision making suggest that economic rationality is neither a good description nor a good normative guidance for decisions. This lecture will explore how decisions are then actually made. I will argue that as human beings do not follow the models of rationality advocated by the economists, it is worth rethinking the models as oppose to trying to change our brains. Based on the literature on behavioural and organizational decision making, I will discuss three different facets of decisions: errors, lies and misunderstandings.

You can participate in the lecture either by joining the meeting through this link or by joining the team (Microsoft Teams, code: gdmuhng)

Bio

Joana Geraldi is associate professor at Copenhagen Business School, Department of Organizations, and leads the Pro&Con – Project Studies Group. She studies people in projects and develop people-centric organizational contexts for projects. Joana’s empirical contexts are in projects and project organizing across different industrial contexts, in particular, large engineering projects, IT, construction and wind industries. Her research earned international awards and led to over 50 publications, most of which in the key project journals and conferences. In the recent years, Joana is intrigued about decisions in projects, and studies how decisions happen in projects, looking at the interfaces between individual cognition, organizational decision making and artefacts, in particular, visualizations. Read more

This lecture starts off with an introduction to the role of emotions in politics. Offering a typology of different emotions and reflecting on their respective significance for political attitudes and behaviour, I zoom in on a set of emotions associated with the clinical diagnosis of depression. How do depressive symptoms affect the way people relate to politics and their willingness to participate in it? I present results indicating a strong negative effect on participation, as well as findings that show how depressive symptoms differentially affect the political interest of men and women. The lecture concludes with reflections on how the Covid-19 crisis affects mental health and by exploring the potential consequences the apparent rise and socio-economic stratification of symptoms have for democracy and civil society.

Bio

Claudia Landwehr is a University professor of public policy at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. Her most recent works involve research on depressive symptoms and nonparticipation, backlash against the procedural consensus of liberal democracy, deliberative democracy, links between material interest and support for direct democracy, as well as social and political responses to Covid-19. She is a member of the senate competition committee of Leibniz Association, co-speaker at the research unit “Interdisciplinary Public Policy” (JGU Mainz), senior member of the Gutenberg Academy (JGU Mainz) and an academic advisory board member in projects PALO (Participation in Long-Term Decision-Making) SRC Finland and ZIRIUS - Centre for Interdisciplinary Risk and Innovation Studies, Stuttgart. Read more

• Recommended read (requires login)

Bio

Roberto Manzocco was born and raised in Italy. A graduate of Philosophy and of Science Communication (International School of Advanced Studies in Trieste), he earned his PhD in History of Science at the University of Pisa, defending a thesis on Ludwig von Bertalanffy and General Systems Theory. Currently he is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology of the John Jay College for Criminal Justice, City University of New York. He has published five books, three in the field of so-called pop philosophy, and two on transhumanism; he also worked as science journalist, publishing in five years more than 2000 articles. Read more

• Recommended read: http://www.humanamente.eu/index.php/HM/article/view/322/265

Bio

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is a tenured philosophy professor at John Cabot University in Rome and is director and co-founder of the Beyond Humanism Network, Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute for the Humanities at Ewha Womans University in Seoul and Visiting Fellow at the Ethics Centre of the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena. He is editor of more than 10 essay collections, and author of the following monographs: Metaphysics without Truth (Marquette University Press 2007), Menschenwürde nach Nietzsche (WBG 2010), Transhumanismus (Herder 2016), Schöner neuer Mensch (Nicolai, 2018), Übermensch (Schwabe 2019), On Transhumanism (Penn State University Press 2020), We have always been cyborgs (Bristol University Press, 2021). In addition, he is Editor-in-Chief and Founding Editor of the “Journal of Posthuman Studies” (a double-blind peer review journal, published by Penn State University Press since 2017). Furthermore, he is in great demand as a speaker in all parts of the world (World Humanities Forum, Global Solutions Taipei Workshop, Biennale Arte Venezia, TEDx) and a regular contact person of national and international journalists and media representatives (Die Zeit, Cicero, Der Standard; Die Presse am Sonntag). www.sorgner.de

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András Sajó is University Professor, Central European University, Wien and former Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights. He taught comparative constitutional law in many countries, most recently at Harvard Law School. His Constitutional Sentiments (Yale University Press, 2011) was the first systematic monography showing the role of public emotions in the formation of constitutional institutions. His current interest in emotion regulation concerns the display of emotions in cyberspace and the new, emotionally driven structures of communication is related to his work at the Oversight Board of Facebook.

Bio

Dr. John Morrison is a senior lecturer in Criminology at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has an interdisciplinary background in psychology, international relations and criminology. John's research interests include organisational fragmentation, disengagement from terrorist groups, and the role of trust in terrorism. Dr. Morrison is the host of the Talking Terror podcast and is on the Editorial Board of three leading terrorism studies journals.