Paper short abstract:

Cross-Cultural Psychology and Cultural Neuroscience are increasingly leading the public discourse on "culture" while social and cultural anthropologists refrain from research on the biological foundations of cultural phenomena. With our research project on envy in cross-cultural perspectives we want to propose a way for contributing to newly emerging research agendas in the "hard sciences".

Paper long abstract:

Subdisciplines of Psychology and Neuroscience are ever more concerned with studying "culture". From the perspective of Cultural and Social Anthropology they are building their research on dichotomizing study designs and restrictive hypotheses. Despite this Cross-Cultural Psychology and Cultural Neuroscience do not only dictate scientific discourses, but also highly influence public perceptions of 'culture' in the mass media.

In our project by the title "Are Germans really green-eyed monsters? Cross-cultural perspectives on benign and malicious envy" we are aiming at bridging the gap between the different disciplines through the implementation of a mixed methods approach. Researching on envy by combining quantitative measures (i.e. functional magnetic resonance imaging, psychometric scales) and qualitative data (interviews, focus group discussions), comparing samples from Germany, Japan and Indonesia and working in an interdisciplinary team of psychologists, neuroscientists, sociologists and anthropologists we are trying to contribute to a holistic view on emotions.

With this talk I will reflect on our methodical triangulation with its possibilities and limitations for a "classic" anthropological study on "culture" (in the specific field of emotion research) and will present first results of our current project.