Affective Force Fields in Urban Space

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Tobias Schröder
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 449494525

What makes places in a city attractive? This question is of scientific interest and politically relevant, given current challenges faced by many major cities with a rise in populations, spiraling rents, and resulting increased social segregation between more and less attractive districts of the city. Such questions have been studied extensively in disciplines such as architecture, urban planning and economics. Here, we propose to address the deeper social psychological mechanisms that drive the emergence of collective representations of urban attractiveness (called here affective meaning of place), which we assume to underlie human decisions about residential location, modes of transportation, leisure activities, etc. To this end, we propose to combine the first French PI’s expertise studying affective judgment of place using an experimental approach, with the German PI’s expertise studying affective dynamics of human communication using a computational modeling approach. We aim to develop and validate a mathematically formalized theory of how affective processes govern human perceptions, decisions, and behaviors in urban space. Capitalizing on major theoretical traditions in social psychology and sociology (field theory, consistency theory, social constructionism, affect control theory), we propose that personal and collective meaning-making processes generate affective force fields, which in turn constrain human behavior in the city. We will create a computer model called ACT-space (for affect control theory of urban space) that makes precise predictions about how humans perceive affectively and behave in urban environments. We will then use innovative Virtual Reality (VR) technology, in which the French participant has extensive expertise, to seek ecological validation of ACT-space. The project comprises the following methodological steps: (1) compilation of an extensive dictionary of concepts and vignettes describing social interactions in cities, along with empirical ratings of their affective meanings derived from a survey of French and German respondents; (2) using data from (1) to parameterize a computational model (ACT-space) to predict the likelihood of specific human-environment interactions; (3) generating simulations with ACT-space to explore meaningful cross-cultural differences between French and German urban culture; (4) a series of vignette experiments to test semantic predictions from ACT-space; (5) a series of visual experiments to test spatial predictions from ACT-space; (6) compilation of a visual library of urban identities (avatars) and settings to be used in a VR environment; and (7) a series of experiments using VR technology to test behavioral predictions from ACT-space.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France
• Partner Organisation: Agence Nationale de la Recherche / The French National Research Agency
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Christophe Blaison