Cambridge University Press Foundations of Affective Social Learning: Conceptualizing the Social Transmission of Value (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction)

Written by experts in comparative, developmental, social, cognitive and cultural psychology, this book introduces the novel concept of affective social learning to help explain why what matters to us, matters to us. In the same way that social learning describes how we observe other people's behaviour to learn how to use a particular object, affective social learning describes how we observe other people's emotions to learn how to value a particular object, person or event. As such, affective social learning conceptualises the transmission of value from a given culture to a given person and reveals why the things that are so important to us can be of no consequence at all to others. Review 'It may seem obvious that learning from others is grounded in emotional connections, but for the longest time social learning was considered a mere variant of individual learning. This volume breaks this tradition as it convincingly argues, from many areas of expertise, that emotional closeness is key to how humans and other primates learn from each other.' Frans de Waal, Director of the Living Links Center, Scotland, and C. H. Candler Professor of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta'Uniquely dedicated to understanding how emotional expressions enable observers to learn about their (social) environment, this volume highlights the intrinsically social constitution of emotions. By bringing together diverse theoretical perspectives and empirical approaches from different research traditions, this book offers a rich picture of the emerging research on affective social learning.' Gerben A. van Kleef, Universiteit van Amsterdam, the Netherlands Book Description Introduces the novel concept of affective social learning to explain how values are socially transmitted. About the Author Daniel Dukes holds research positions at the Université de Fribourg and the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, Université de Genève, Switzerland. He also currently holds a Swiss National Science Fund visiting research post at the University of Oxford.Fabrice Clément is full Professor and co-founder of the Cognitive Science Centre at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.