GRK 2070: Understanding Social Relationships

人类社会的特点是高度分化的社会关系、广泛的协作、符号交流和制度化的规则。人类社会的复杂性在动物界被视为独一无二的。然而，这种明显的社会性与非人类灵长类动物共享，它们中的大多数也生活在具有不同社会关系的复杂社会群体中。因此，维持持久的社会关系并在个体和群体层面上调节社会互动的能力似乎是灵长类中的一种共享和适应性特征。在这个跨学科的RTG中，我们汇集了发展心理学家、认知心理学家、个性心理学家和社会心理学家、行为生物学家和认知生物学家以及语言学家。这个RTG的首要目标是研究生理、情绪和认知是如何在非人类灵长类动物和人类的社会关系的形成、调节和维持中相互交织的。我们的总体假设是，非人灵长类动物和人类具有共同的基本生理机制和情绪反应，这些机制和情绪反应影响社会关系的形成和维持，而它们在处理和表征社会信息的能力方面存在差异，这反过来又影响决策。我们的研究包括三个领域：社会信号，即社会信号的使用和理解，社会监控，作为跟踪他人社会互动的能力，以及社会协调和分化，社会互动的调节。我们研究婴儿、儿童和成年人类，以及不同种类的非人类灵长类动物，并采用各种方法，从神经生理学到野外观察非人类灵长类动物。我们利用各种研究方法的优势，全面了解灵长类社会行为的基础。我们处于独特的地位，可以提供野外站点来研究野外的非人类灵长类动物，在德国灵长类中心(DPZ)对非人类灵长类动物进行认知实验，在成熟的儿童实验室测试儿童，并应用人类使用的各种神经认知方法。通过这种结合，我们的目标是推动我们对社会关系的理解的界限，并弥合科学学科之间的差距。在这一框架内，我们的目标是培养一批强大的年轻研究人员，他们为学术界内外的职业生涯做好准备。我们的教学理念包括跨学科监督委员会、方法课程、理论会议和研讨会，由学生共同组织，符合哥廷根大学结构化博士项目“行为与认知”的规则。

Human societies are characterized by highly differentiated social relationships, extensive collaboration, symbolic communication, and institutionalized regulations. The complexity of human societies is seen as unique within the animal kingdom. Yet, the pronounced sociality is shared with nonhuman primates, the majority of which also live in complex social groups with differentiated social relationships. Thus, the ability to maintain lasting social relationships and regulate social interactions at the individual and at the group level appears to be a shared and adaptive trait within the primate order. In this interdisciplinary RTG, we bring together developmental, cognitive, personality and social psychologists, behavioral and cognitive biologists as well as linguists. The overarching aim of this RTG is to study how physiology, emotion, and cognition are intertwined in the formation, regulation, and maintenance of social relationships in nonhuman primates and humans. Our global hypothesis is that nonhuman primates and humans share basal physiological mechanisms and emotional responses that affect the formation and maintenance of social relationships, while they differ in terms of their abilities to process and represent social information, which in turn affects decision making. Our studies encompass three domains: social signals, i.e., the use and understanding of social signals, social monitoring as the ability to track the social interactions of others, and social coordination and differentiation, the regulation of social interactions in dyads and groups. We study infants, children, and adult humans, as well as different species of nonhuman primates, and employ diverse methodological approaches, ranging from neurophysiology to observations of nonhuman primates in the wild. We leverage the strengths of our various research approaches to gain a comprehensive understanding of the foundations of primate social behavior. We are in the unique position to offer access to field stations to study nonhuman primates in the wild, to run cognitive experiments with nonhuman primates at the German Primate Center (DPZ), to test children in established child labs, and to apply a variety of neurocognitive methods employed in humans. With this combination, we aim to push the boundaries of our understanding of social relationships, and to bridge the gaps between the scientific disciplines. Within this framework, our aim is to train a strong group of young researchers who are well equipped for a career inside or outside academia. Our teaching concept includes interdisciplinary supervisory committees, method courses, theory sessions, and workshops co-organized by the students, in accordance with the rules of the structured PhD program “Behavior and Cognition” at the University of Göttingen.