Unified Social Cognition

Norman Anderson

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781841698830
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136871924
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

This eagerly awaited volume presents Anderson's cumulative progress in unified social psychology. The research is grounded in the three fundamental laws of information integration theory. Research shows these laws to apply to topics in social and personality psychology such as person cognition, attitudes, moral cognition, social development, group dynamics and self-cognition. This definitive work will broaden the appreciation of Anderson's unique treatment of psychological processes.

Chapter 1 Preface

Two axioms are fundamental for psychological science:
Axiom of Purposiveness and Axiom of Integration.

The Axiom of Purposiveness recognizes that everyday cognition is motivated toward goals. The Axiom of Integration recognizes that thought and action depend on integration of multiple sources of information. These axioms constitute a conceptual framework for unifying the psychological field.

Cumulative progress toward unified science is being made based on psychological laws of information integration. These laws have made solid contributions to most areas of social–personality. These include person cognition, functional theory of social attitudes, group dynamics, including marriage, cognitive development, and person science.

These laws have also made solid contributions to most other areas of human psychology. These include functional theory of learning/memory, cognitive theory of judgment–decision, perception/psychophysics. and functional approach to language, This theory may fairly be called a unified theory.

PRINCIPLE OF INFORMATION INTEGRATION

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

LEVELS OF ANALYSIS

RESPECT PHENOMENA

UNIFIED SCIENCE

MODES OF THINKING

UNIFIED THEORY

NOTES

Chapter 1

UNIFIED THEORY OF COGNITION

Information Integration Theory (IIT) is a unified, functional theory. IIT is functional by virtue of its base in the Axiom of Purposiveness; it is unified by virtue of general psychological laws for the Axiom of Integration. These psychological laws have had some success in nearly every branch of social–personality, a major concern of this volume. These same laws have also been effective across most other fields of human psychology, including learning/memory, judgment–decision, language, and child development.

IIT also unifies the idiographic approach, which emphasizes uniqueness of each individual, with the nomothetic approach, which seeks general laws that hold across individuals.

Analytic power is available through three psychological laws—laws of information integration. These laws are a foundation for functional theory of goal-oriented perception, thought, and action. Cumulative progress has been made toward unification of the psychological field.

PRINCIPLE OF INFORMATION INTEGRATION

Psychological science rests on two axioms:

Axiom of Integration;

Axiom of Purposiveness.

Both axioms are biologically based. Purposiveness appears in affect and motivation, which are information for guiding behavior toward survival. Integration appears in a general integrational propensity to take account of multiple elements in a stimulus field. These biological axioms are extended in cognition, in which they are fundamental.

AXIOM OF INTEGRATION

The Axiom of Integration is universally recognized. Thought and action generally depend on integrated action of multiple stimulus informers. Understanding thought and action depends on understanding how multiple stimulus informers are integrated.

The standard mode of attack, however, has not led to unification. Instead, it has led to increasing fragmentation, as many writers have observed. The standard mode manipulates relevant variables, searching for order and regularity in the responses, usually in relation to some theoretical hypothesis. Numerous interesting phenomena have been uncovered in this way. Our field is immensely richer today than it was a half-century ago.

Unified theory, however, has not emerged. Quite the contrary. Reviews of work on any problem show that the effect of one variable typically depends on other variables in complicated ways. Repeated attempts to unify the results repeatedly break down when examined in new experiments. This is why literature reviews so often conclude “It all depends.” Compartmentalization and fragmentation steadily increase. As more is learned, the prospect of unification recedes ever farther.

Unified theory must be sought at a different level—the level of processes that underlie integration. This integrationist approach is the subject of this book.

AXIOM OF PURPOSIVENESS

The Axiom of Purposiveness is also universally recognized. Perception, thought, and action are goal-directed. Specific sensory systems have evolved for biological goals of food and warmth. Social goals of family and self-esteem are strong motivators in humans. More abstract goals associated with religion and science are important in organized societies (Note 1).

Some writers have sought unified theory with purposiveness as the basic principle. Most such approaches have been rightly criticized as teleological—circular reasoning, not true explanation. But although purposiveness is not sufficient for theory construction, it is the basic starting point.

Indeed, the Axiom of Purposiveness has cash value. Purposiveness implies a one-dimensional representation in terms of goal approach/avoidance. This is a priceless simplification of complex reality. Although this simplification omits much of importance, it confers an invaluable base for analysis. This implication is universally recognized, of course, in the ubiquity of metric response measures in psychology, as with affect/motivation and judgment–decision.

Figure 1.1. Information integration diagram. Chain of three operators, V–I–A, leads from observable stimulus field, S_b, to observable response, R. Valuation operator, V, transforms stimuli, S_b, into subjective representations, ψ_b. Integration operator, I, transforms subjective stimulus field, ψ_b, into implicit response, p. Action operator, A, transforms implicit response, p, into observable response, R. (After N. H. Anderson, Foundations of Information Integration Theory, 1981)

INTEGRATION DIAGRAM

The Axiom of Purposiveness and the Axiom of Integration are basic to IIT. How these axioms are incorporated is shown in the Integration Diagram of Figure 1.1.

The Integration Diagram shows two physical stimuli, S_A and S_B, that impinge on the organism and are transmuted into psychological representations, and ψ_A and ψ_B, by the valuation operator, V. The integration operator, I, integrates these psychological representations to produce an internal response, p. This internal response is externalized by the action operator. A, to become the observable response, R. More than two stimuli are allowed, of course, but two bring out the essential problems (Note 2).

The integration operation in the Integration Diagram is a door to unified theory. Nature offers us a key to open this door.

Other approaches lack theory and method to deal with Axiom of Integration. They apply awkward, makeshift methods, therefore, or they largely pass by integration and focus on other issues. But as interesting as such work can be, it leads to fragmentation, away from unification.

GOALS

The Axiom of Purposiveness implies that each operator in the Integration Diagram depends on prevailing goals. Valuation obviously depends on motivations and purposes that change over time, as with hunger, interest, and sexual interaction. Action relates directly to immediate goals, of course, and integration mediates between the multiple informers and the single response.

This goal-dependence of values is fundamental in psychological science. Physical stimuli do not have fixed psychological values. Quite the contrary; value is variable, for it depends on prevailing goals. In general, moreover, value must be constructed within the immediate context. Reflex memory may suffice in some cases, but more or less complex processing is often needed to construct value. Measurement in psychology thus has very different nature from measurement in physics.

To incorporate goal-dependence, psychological theory must be contextual and constructionist. This may seem to lead into chaos. How can a foundation of regularity and order be possible when values must be constructed anew for ever-changing motivations and the flux of external happenstance?

Fortunately, unified theory is possible, in principle and in practice. A foundation lies in the integration operation; a few integration processes account for a diverse spectrum of perception, thought, and action. This line of inquiry led to a substantial body of empirical studies in almost every area of human psychology. Overall, it led to general psychological laws.

PSYCHOLOGICAL LAWS

Three psychological laws—averaging, adding, multiplying—appear throughout personality–social. These three laws are also found in many other areas, including judgment–decision, learning/memory, psychophysics, language, and developmental. This breadth of application warrants the term law.

These algebraic laws are a foundation for unified theory. The most obvious value of these laws is their intrinsic interest as mathematical order underlying qualitative complexity. Associated with this is a solution to the long-standing controversy over true psychological measurement. Most important is the conceptual framework brought by these laws (see Conceptual Framework below).

The psychological laws give effective approaches to many issues: affect is unified with cognition; person cognition is liberated from phenomenological constriction and placed on solid theoretical ground; attitudes are conceptualized as AKSs, liberating social psychology from the traditional one-dimensional conception of attitude as evaluative response; the long-controversial issue of true psychological measurement is successfully resolved; even psychophysics is liberated from its fixation on the idea of psychophysical law.

FUNCTIONAL MEASUREMENT WITH PARALLELISM THEOREM

To make the preceding ideas concrete, the theory of functional measurement for testing an adding-type law will be outlined. Consider the hypothesis that two stimulus variables, A and B, are integrated by an adding-type law so that

where ψ_A and ψ_B denote subjective, psychological values of A and B, and p the integrated response.

Addition laws have often been conjectured but proving these conjectures seemed impossible; no way was known to measure the true psychological values, ψ_A and ψ_B, in Equation *. This problem of stimulus measurement was solved with the theory of functional measurement.

To apply functional measurement to test this addition hypothesis, manipulate A and B in a two-way integration design and measure the response. Look at the integration graph; this pattern tells all. A pattern of parallelism supports the addition hypothesis. It has been as simple as that in many empirical applications in nearly every area of human psychology.

This parallelism theorem, detailed in the next chapter, has striking advantages. Of exceptional importance is that the subjective stimulus values, ψ_A and ψ_B, need not be known beforehand. Instead, parallelism analysis uncovers these values—measured on true psychological scales. Indeed, a pattern of parallelism supports a cornucopia of six benefits listed here.

1. Support for the addition law.

2. Support for linearity (equal intervals) of the response measure.

3. Support for linear (interval) scales of each stimulus variable.

4. Support for meaning invariance (see below).

5. Support for independence of valuation and integration operations.

6. Support for construct validity.

Empirically, parallelism depends on two conditions. First, of course, is that the experimental task should follow an addition rule. In fact, adding-type rules have been found in nearly all fields of human psychology. Second, the response scale should be linear, that is, R should be a linear function of ρ in the Integration Diagram. This long-sought goal of linear response was achieved with the method of functional rating, a simple development of the ordinary rating scale described in Chapter 2.

This method is called functional measurement because it measures those values that functioned in the integration task. This functional theory of measurement made it possible to establish all three algebraic laws on solid empirical ground.

Qualitative, conceptual implications of the psychological laws are far more important than their quantitative precision; the latter is mainly important as a base for the former. The last three benefits of the parallelism theorem are conceptual, illustrated next with a much-studied experimental task.

INTEGRATION GRAPHS

Integration graphs are basic in IIT. Patterning in an integration graph can be remarkable informative about underlying cognition, as indicated in the six listed benefits of the parallelism theorem. An illustration with hypothetical data is given in Figure 1.2. Two persons, C.H. and R. P. McG., judged badness of story children who threw a rock that hit another child. Three levels of harm (horizontal axis) combined with three levels of intent (curve parameter) yielded nine story children, each represented by one data point in each person’s integration graph. The following itemization shows the wealth of information available in an integration graph (see similarly Fairness Theory in Chapter 7).

1. Algebraic Blame Schema. The parallelism in the integration graphs supports an adding-type rule, Blame = Intent + Harm. The rationale is clear in the graph. Since the scare curve lies a constant distance above the careless curve, it is as though scare adds a constant amount of blame. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• 1. Unified Theory of Cognition
• 2. Psychological Laws
• 3. Foundations of Person Cognition
• 4. Functional Theory of Attitudes
• 5. Attitude Integration Theories
• 6. Comparisons of Attitude Theories
• 7. Moral Algebra
• 8. Group Dynamics
• 9. Cognitive Theory of Judgment-Decision
• 10. General Theory
• 11. Experimental Methods
• 12. Unified Science of Psychology
• References
• Subject Index
• Author Index