What
Social, political, national and global changes are concentrated in cities. Cities become hotspots where different values, ways of thinking, norms and practices meet. In our research, we are interested in the feelings that people experience in changing and diverse urban environments. We study how emotions affect people’s everyday choices and move people – both physically and mentally. Our starting point is that emotions play a central role in the running of everyday life in cities.
The Everyday Emotions research is part of the EmergentCommunity project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC, Project number 946012).
How?
We study everyday emotions in three different European countries: Finland, Sweden and France. Our goal is to get information about how people’s Community relations in cities are formed: what issues create tensions or challenges; which things act as factors that hold the community together. We want to know how people interpret changing situations, events and encounters in cities and what kind of emotional reactions they cause in them.
We study emotions both neuropsychologically and social scientifically. In its data collection, the research uses new technology and more traditional data collection methods. We collect data by measuring the emotional responses of the research participants using neurological measurement methods.
The participants get watch a 3D video that illustrates everyday life and people’s encounters in urban space. While watching the video, the emotional responses of the participants are measured (heart electrical curve, electrical conductivity of the skin, facial muscle movement and gaze direction). After watching, the participants fill out a form and take part in an interview, where they are asked about the video and some background information.
Why?
There has been a burgeoning interest in emotions in the fields of social sciences and humanities. In today’s media-influenced world, emotions produce reality. Emotions are constantly present in social discussions surrounding values, norms, practices, life choices, people and different groups of people. They are also present in debates that comment on cities, their trends and events. Against these debates that are oftentimes tensional and polarized, it is important to know what people really feel in their everyday lives, and how emotions construct the communal relations among inhabitants in cities.
In this study, the social science perspective on emotions is combined with the neuropsychological research tradition. With this combination, it is possible to get new information about the way emotions effect on the conflicts and coexistence in cities.
Funding
The research is funded by the European Research Council (ERC)
The video of Emergent Community project: