Đang chuẩn bị liên kết để tải về tài liệu:
MillonLerner-eds-Personality-And-Social-Psychology2

Không đóng trình duyệt đến khi xuất hiện nút TẢI XUỐNG Tải xuống

PA R T T H R E ESOCIAL PSYCHOLOGYCHAPTER 11Social Cognition.GALEN V. BODENHAUSEN, C. NEIL MACRAE, AND KURT HUGENBERGMENTAL REPRESENTATION: STRUCTURE.AND PROCESS 259.Associative Network Models 260.Schemas 262.Exemplars 264.Distributed Memory Models 265.AUTOMATIC AND CONTROLLED PROCESSES.IN SOCIAL COGNITION 265.Automatic Social Cognition 266.Controlled Social Cognition 268SOCIAL COGNITION IN CONTEXT: MOTIVATIONAL.AND AFFECTIVE INFLUENCES 271.Epistemic Motivation 272.Defensive Motivation 273.Social-Adjustive Motivation 276.Affective States 276.CONCLUSION 277.REFERENCES 277Sociality is a hallmark of human functioning. Indeed, the.survival and success of our evolutionary ancestors depended.on their ability to form coordinated bands of interdependent.actors (e.g., Leakey, 1978). The benefits of group living allowed a band to succeed where an individual might fail (e.g.,.Axelrod & Hamilton, 1981). Although our species has come.a long way from the harsh and precarious conditions present.during early hominid evolution, human beings continue to be.utterly dependent on one another for their survival and wellbeing. It is therefore quite reasonable to assume that human.cognitive and motivational tendencies were shaped by the.demands of group living (e.g., Brewer, 1997; Seyfarth &.Cheney, 1994). Some have claimed that our capacities for.reasoning and our other higher mental functions may owe.their very existence to the constraints imposed by sociality on.human survival and reproductive success (Byrne, 2000). Our.most fundamental concerns depend crucially on our ability to.understand the characteristics, motivations, and intentions of.others; according to Cummins (1998, p. 37), “the evolution of.mind emerges as a strategic arms race in which the weaponry.is ever-increasing mental capacity to represent and manipulate internal representations of the minds of others.” This capacity to understand the minds of others is so central to.successful human functioning that when it is compromised,.the consequences are often devastating (e.g., Baron-Cohen,.1995). How the mind understands the social world withinwhich it functions is therefore a matter of central importance.in psychology. It is this question that is at the center of theory.and research on social cognitionSocial cognition refers to the cognitive structures and.processes that shape our understanding of social situations.and that mediate our behavioral reactions to them. At its core,.the fundamental assumption of social cognition research is.the idea that internal mental representations of other persons.and of social situations play a key causal role in shaping behavior. The central task of social cognition research is thus to.provide a specification of the nature of these mental structures and the processes that operate on them. A simple,.generic depiction of the theoretical space within which social.cognition researchers work is provided in Figure 11.1. Stated.at the most general level, a social cognition analysis incorporates a consideration of (a) the informational cues that are.currently experienced in the social environment; (b) mental.representations that are constructed on the basis of current or.previous experience; (c) the ways these representations are.manipulated and the processes through which they influence.other aspects of attention and cognition; and (d) the decisions, judgments, intentions, and behaviors that result from.the application of these processes. The distinction between.representation and process is more a matter of convenience.than it is a reflection of a clear theoretical dissociation between considerations of mental structure and mental process257.258Social CognitionFigure 11.1 A schematic overview of the core assumptions of the social.cognition perspective.In fact, as we shall see, many social-cognitive theories consist of propositions that link representational assumptions.with particular processing tendencies that are assumed to be.inhe