Welcome to the Cognitive and Affective Sociology Network
Cognitive and Affective Sociology investigates how culture and society systematically shape peoples’ feelings and cognitions. Likewise, it aims at understanding how these feelings and cognitions give rise to stable patterns of social action and interaction and ultimately contribute to bringing about macro-social structures and symbolic order. Cognitive and Affective Sociology acknowledges that cognition and emotion are fundamentally dependent on each other and exhibit marked social plasticity, both in embodied and representational views. They are susceptible to the influence of social institutions and practices and at the same time form the building blocks social behavior. Investigating the cognitive and affective foundations of social action is thus essential in understanding the social world, from dyadic interactions to group processes and large-scale social dynamics. Cognitive and Affective Sociology stands in the tradition of the sociology of knowledge, cultural sociology, and social psychology, bringing together different theoretical and methodological paradigms.
