Social emotions and the experience of politics in everyday life. Towards an interactionist theory of political behaviour and an empirical approach to study it

有大量文献研究政治行为的变化，如投票、示威或讨论政治。虽然我们对这些行为之间的关联知道很多，但实际上激励人们从事这些行为的微观动力仍然是一个黑匣子。该项目的主要目标是促进我们对这一方面的理论理解。它通过发展一种理论来实现这一点，该理论认为，表达政治偏好的动机源于世俗的微观互动(或“仪式”)中的情感动态。第二个目标是探索这种观点是否提供了经验性的附加值。核心(和新颖的)观点是，社会互动的情景质量对政治偏好以及将其转化为政治行动的动机具有独立的因果影响。理论上，该项目将提出一种建立在兰德尔·柯林斯极具影响力的微观社会学基础上的关系视角。得到生物学和心理学有力证据支持的核心直觉是，政治态度等认知来自积极情绪，而积极情绪只有在成功的互动中才能产生。这些“仪式”被理论认为是任何认知因素对政治行为的相对重要性背后的关键关系机制。这解决了现有理论中的一个重要漏洞，这些理论几乎没有告诉我们选民如何驾驭可能影响他们行为的众多价值观、利益或身份认同。通过阐明统一的动机基础，仪式理论可以将现有的争论整合成一个更一般、更完整的因果链。这一理论简化是对克服现有方法碎片化的重要贡献。该项目不仅将柯林斯的观点应用于政治，还对政治仪式如何嵌入社会话语和意识形态进行了理论化。因此，它将提供一个原创性的理论，将情景微观动态以及对宏观层面的影响给予公正的对待。经验表明，该项目在定性方法(旨在深入理解政治仪式中的情绪动态)和面向因果的交互质量对偏好表达的影响的测试之间取得了创新的平衡。它通过将焦点小组用作政治仪式的定性观察、定量测量和实验操纵的场所来做到这一点。焦点小组中的政治讨论将为定性观察提供丰富的材料，但它也将产生文字记录和素材，从中可以得出互动质量的副语言指标。反过来，这些指标又允许对该理论的预测进行定量测试。最后，通过随机改变焦点小组的组成，可以通过实验来操纵仪式成功的机会，以提供更强大的测试。

A large literature studies variation in political behaviour, such as voting, demonstrating, or discussing politics. While we know a lot about the correlates of these behaviours, the micro-dynamics that actually motivate people to engage in them remain a black box. The primary goal of the project is to advance our theoretical understanding of precisely this aspect. It does so by developing a theory in which the motivation to express political preferences derives from emotional dynamics in mundane micro-level interactions (or ‘rituals’). The second goal is to explore whether such a perspective provides empirical added value. The core (and novel) idea is that the situational quality of social interactions has an independent causal influence on political preference - as well as on the motivation to translate them into political actions. Theoretically, the project will propose a relational perspective that builds on Randall Collins’s highly influential micro sociology. The central intuition, which is supported by robust evidence from biology and psychology, is that cognitions, such as political attitudes, derive their motivational force from positive emotions that can only be generated in successful interactions. Such ‘rituals’ are theorized as the key relational mechanism underlying the relative importance of any cognitive factor for political behaviour. This addresses an important gap in existing theories, which tell us little about how voters navigate the multitude of values, interests, or identities that could influence their behaviour. Through explicating a unified motivational basis, ritual theory can integrate existing arguments into a more general and complete causal chain. This theory reduction is an important contribution to overcoming the fragmentation of existing approaches. The project goes beyond applying Collins’s perspective to politics by theorizing how political rituals are embedded in societal discourses and ideologies. As a result, it will deliver an original theory that gives justice to situational micro dynamics as well as to influences on the macro level.Empirically, the project strikes an innovative balance between a qualitative approach (that aims at a deep understanding of the emotional dynamics in political rituals) and a causality-oriented test of the effect of interaction quality on the expression of preferences. It does so by using focus groups as sites for qualitative observation, quantitative measurement and experimental manipulation of political rituals. The political discussion in focus groups will provide rich material for qualitative observation, but it will also produce transcripts and footage from which para-linguistic indicators of interaction quality can be derived. The indicators, in turn, allow for a quantitative test of the theory’s prediction. Finally, by randomly varying the composition of the focus groups, the chances for ritual success can be manipulated experimentally to provide an even stronger test.