Affective Social Learning

From their very origins, psychology and sociology have each tended to follow their own path, without taking the other into consideration. This mutual indifference is particularly problematic when studying processes of socialization. On the developmental psychological side, there is perhaps a tendency to consider the child as a “lone explorer,” while on the sociology side, the irreducibility of the social agent to their individual epistemic endeavor is, of course, central. However, socialization is essentially about transmission, from one generation to the next, of ways of doing, thinking, and feeling. In this chapter, the authors argue that culture is mostly about what is socially relevant, and that what is socially relevant can be learned by observing relevant others’ affective expressions. This affective social learning may help close the gap between psychology and sociology by providing different mechanisms that enable individuals to embody, via their developing emotions, the system of cultural relevance in which they live.