"The Biosociology of Solidarity"

Video recordings

i this is doctor well calc a from the sociology department a can state university

and i wanna tell you a little about my article on the by a sociology

of solidarity co authored with my colleagues just of the pond

and doctor stanford gregory junior

solidarity is certainly one of sociologist oldest

interest and more recently in neuroscience

researchers have become quite interested in the brain structures and functions that a fact

and are affected by social behavior including the ways in which

social bonds form and also the ways in which these bonds

persist or break down over time

in this article we bring some relevant insights from the two fields together

and we suggest how interdisciplinary work that attempts to fit these different pieces together has

the potential to greatly improve our understanding of solidarity beyond what the perspectives

on their own

can accomplish

we know for instance that the brain isn't just and independent variable that contributes to

causing our behaviour

in social situations

that's certainly true but the brain is also a dependent variable that is changed all

throughout our lives

by input from the social environment

and that's with this article is about essentially

to better understand fundamental social phenomena such as solidarity

sociology is ability to describe explained in model social environments can be put together with

neuroscience as contributions to understanding structure

function and change inside the brain

i think sociology in neuroscience have a lot to offer one another

and i think the barriers between the two fields are continuing to come down

and mike watt there's an icy this is a productive trend and we point out

why we think that in our article

in shorter our views that solidarity in practice among the various sciences themselves

is one thing that promises to improve our intellectual understanding

of social solidarity as a vital part of social life

studying aspects of solitary in the classroom can be a lot of fun

looking at the immediate building blocks of solidarity things like group synchronization or

emotional contagion

just one example

emotional contagion is the idea that emotions or motion displays are

basically viral

that people in groups tend to catch emotions from one another

very quickly and automatically initially through motor mimicry which the next to align emotions

besides being an interesting topic for open free discussion in class where you have students

come up with examples of emotional contagion

you could hear applications or at least emir applications of past research on emotional contagion

and then talk about some of the social

and biological explanations that we review in our article

you know play a really sad or happy scene from one your favourite movies

and then have your students use a like or type scale to rate how happy

or sad they fell

while watching the scene or during each scene if you use multiple clips

and the four minute string this particular exercise i would recommend then instructors read an

article by dorothy

published in the journal of non verbal behaviour nineteen ninety seven entitled

the emotional contagion scale a measure of individual differences

if you do the exercise and if you choose some powerful scenes

you should find that the emotions conveyed in the scenes in fact the class

and if you're interested in gender you might try replicating some additional research published by

authority and his colleagues where they're report evidence that women are more susceptible to emotional

contagion than men

if you find that you can discuss with the class explanations including by a social

explanations as to why that might be the case

and if you don't find evidence of emotional contagion or gender it emotional contagion in

a particular administration of the exercise

well then you could brainstorm with the class about why you didn't get what you

expected

the sum up in the feature i think we're going to see sociologists and neuroscience

as

working together more frequently and i think that's

is going to have a very positive effect on discovery

and advancing our understanding of social behavior and social organisation

that said i hope you find our article

interesting and useful