Cognitive Social Psychology

The Princeton Symposium on the Legacy and Future of Social Cognition

Gordon B. Moskowitz

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780805834147
• eBook ISBN: 9781135664244
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

A comprehensive overview of the mechanisms involved in how cognitive processes determine thought and behavior toward the social world, Cognitive Social Psychology:
*examines cognition as a motivated process wherein cognition and motivation are seen as intertwined;
* reviews the latest research on stereotyping, prejudice, and the ability to control these phenomena--invaluable information to managers who need to prevent against bias in the workplace; and
*provides a current analysis of classic problems/issues in social psychology, such as cognitive dissonance, the fundamental attribution error, social identity, stereotyping, social comparison, heuristic processing, the self-concept, assimilation and contrast effects, and goal pursuit.

Intended for psychology and management students, as well as social, cognitive, and industrial/organizational psychologists in both academic and applied settings. This new book is also an ideal text for courses in social cognition due to its cohesive structure.

Part I. The Motives Driving Social Cognition

1

A Relational Approach to Cognition: Shared Experience and Relationship Affirmation in Social Cognition

Curtis D.Hardin Terri D.Conley

University of California, Los Angeles

Social psychology is poised to realize the synthesis envisioned in the “The Sovereignty of Social Cognition” by the late Thomas Ostrom (1984), who defined social cognition as “the struggle to understand the interdependence between cognition and social behavior.” In so doing, Ostrom broke from contemporary definitions of social cognition, which in the 1960s and 1970s was defined as the study of cognition about social objects and since the early 1980s has been defined as the study of the cognitive bases of social perception and behavior (cf. Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967). Although Ostrom celebrated the identification of cognitive foundations of social behavior, he lamented the lack of research on social foundations of cognition. However, it can no longer be said that the social bases of cognition have been ignored. Indeed the recent decade has witnessed a blossoming interest in how social relationships affect even very basic information processing (e.g., Baldwin & Sinclair, 1996; Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Higgins, 1992; Jost & Banaji, 1994; Leary, 1995; Markus & Kitayama 1991; Schwarz, 1994; Steele & Aronson, 1995; Tice, 1992).

We argue that pursuing theoretical integrations of cognitive and social activity will yield important new insights into the hallmark issues of social psychology, including attitudes, social perception, the self-concept, and stereotyping. To do so, we first identify in the history of social cognition research two fundamental human requirements—social connectedness and cognitive understanding—and argue that a full understanding of social-cognitive interdependence requires a renewed focus on how social interaction structures basic information processing. We propose that shared reality theory provides one such synthesis from its postulate that both relational and epistemic requirements are served by the interpersonal realization of shared experience (Hardin & Higgins, 1996). Moreover, research demonstrating the role of shared reality processes in the regulation of interpersonal behavior and individual cognition provides tentative promise for Ostrom's prescriptive charge for the social cognition endeavor.

FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL COGNITION: RELATIONSHIPS AND EPISTEMICS

Twisting through the history of research on social cognition, like the frayed strands of a double helix, is the observation of two great forces driving human behavior: One is the requirement to establish, affirm, and protect social relationships, and the other is the requirement to understand the self and its environments (inter alia., Asch, 1952; Festinger, 1954a; Freud, 1922/1989; Heider, 1958; Higgins, 1981a; James, 1890/1950; Lewin, 1931; Mead, 1934; Newcomb, 1953; Schachter, 1959; Sherif, 1936; Sullivan, 1953). Interestingly, for the most part, the contemporary literatures on the pursuit and consequences of the relational and epistemic needs have evolved independently. For example, contemporary social cognition research has been characterized by a near exclusive focus on epistemics (see Thompson, Naccarato, Parker, & Moskowitz, chap. 2, this volume, for a review)—that is, how the cognitive system enables individuals to understand and thereby adaptively navigate an informationally complex world (e.g., Bargh, 1996; Higgins & Bargh, 1987; Markus & Wurf, 1986; Stangor & Lange, 1994; Swann, 1990). Meanwhile, research on the negotiation and maintenance of social relationships has occurred on the self-described margins of mainstream social psychology (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Collins, 1997; Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Murray & Holmes, 1997). This was not always the case, however, for the American psychological tradition arose out of the modern conception of human nature, including the assumption that individual thought is a product of social activity (e.g., Dewey, 1922/1930; Freud, 1922/1989; James, 1890/1950; Marx & Engels, 1846/1970; Wittgen-stein, 1953). Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, it appears that the theoretical alienation between social behavior and cognition is a relatively recent (and perhaps temporary) development. An expressed focus on their interdependence characterizes classical social-psychological theory, and recently contemporary theorists have reaffirmed an interest in social-cognitive interdependence.

Epistemics and Relationships in Classical Psychology

At its genesis, American psychology accepted as axiomatic the proposition that cognition and social activity are fundamentally interdependent. For example, William James argued that human knowledge is not an individual end, but emerges from an ongoing process of adaptive, cooperative, social activity (e.g., James, 1890/1950, 1907/1992, 1909). Indeed, James' postulate that good thinking is a collective activity (rather than a solitary activity) is one of the defining elements of the pragmatic philosophical tradition (e.g., Dewey, 1922/1930; Mead, 1929). In so doing, James broke radically from classical philosophy by identifying the search and validation of “truth” in practical, social terms rather than in the ephemera of platonic ideals:

True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we can not…. Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs ‘pass,’ so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them. But this all points to direct face-to-face verifications somewhere, without which the fabric of truth collapses like a financial system with no cash-basis whatever. You accept my verification of one thing, I yours of another. We trade on each other's truth. But beliefs verified concretely by somebody are the posts of the whole superstructure. (James, 1907, pp. 100–101, italics in the original)

The social behaviorists built on James' insight with descriptions of ways in which the individual's cognitive world is constructed and regulated by social structure and interpersonal interaction (e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Cooley, 1902/1983; Dewey, 1922/1930; Mead, 1934; Stryker & Statham, 1985). In this tradition, the social-cognitive synthesis is realized by taking as axiomatic the necessity of social relationships for human survival and postulating that adaptive cognitive structure emerges from the internalization of social organization. For example, Cooley (1902) made a foil the individual solipsism of Emerson and others to emphasize instead that individual understanding is predicated on the internalization of the social world:

A castaway who should be unable to retain his imaginative hold upon human society might conceivably live the life of an intelligent animal, exercising his mind upon the natural conditions about him, but his distinctively human faculties would certainly be lost, or in abeyance.

George Herbert Mead articulated a mechanism by which society might be internalized, and in so doing argued that human cognition reflects an ever dynamic interplay among socially shared perspectives (Mead, 1930, 1932, 1934, 1938, 1956). Mead emphasized in particular the role of ongoing cooperative social interaction in the creation and maintenance of meaning. Mead's synthesis of self and society was also predicated on the necessity of human relationships for survival, but through the mechanism of the organized exchange of social gestures and concomitant perspective taking. Mead likened everyday social interaction to rule-governed play in organized games like baseball, in which each participant must continually take the various perspectives of each of the other participants to understand its place, responsibilities, and plans for action. For example, a catcher in baseball must take the perspectives of the batter, shortstop, outfielder, and pitcher (among others) to understand itself and the ever-evolving reality of the game.

The cornerstone of Mead's theory is the concept of the significant symbol, on which rests the human capacity for language and cognitive representation. The significant symbol is realized when an individual evokes in itself, by a social gesture, the functionally identical response the gesture evokes in others. According to Mead, it is only through significant symbols, realized in ongoing social interaction, that people are able to remember the past, anticipate the future, and experience the present. From this perspective, the mind cannot be separated from cooperative social action, but instead arises out of it. Notably, Mead's objective relativism broke radically from the introspectionists and phenomenologists—and, indeed, from many varieties of subjective relativism popular among poststructural theorists of today—by postulating that the individual mind can exist only in relation to other minds with the capacity to share experiences. The social expression and validation of an idea is essential for both its clarity and objectivity, ultimately relieving individual experience of mere solipsism. One of the most important implications of Mead's theory is that, through significant symbols, individual experiences are socially constructed, existing only in relation to the organized social activities that support them, thereby creating meanings out of what would otherwise be an undifferentiated flux of stimuli (cf. Whorf, 1956; Wittgenstein, 1962). Yet because such cognitions are assumed to be linked directly to the shared perspectives of real people in actual social exchange, Mead's social-cognitive theory is a thoroughly material account of mind, and hence congenial to the scientific endeavor (Jost & Hardin, 1997).

While theorists in the Jamesian tradition articulated a social-cognitive synthesis in which epistemics was the primary adaptive consequence of organized social interaction, a complementary synthesis was being articulated in the tradition of psychoanalysis in which social connectedness—and concommitant psychic integrity—was the primary adaptive outcome. Freud and his students postulated that psychological structure is not only grounded in family dynamics, but ultimately motivated by the human need to feel connected with significant others (e.g., Erikson, 1959; Freud, 1922/1989; Jung, 1934; Sullivan, 1953). Like the American pragmatists, Freud (1922/1989) grounded his theory in the necessity of society for survival, identifying separation anxiety as the most primitive human fear. For Freud, the primacy of social relationships renders connectedness an essential human motivation achieved through social identification, in which one attempts to take on the characteristics, desires, and behaviors of the object of identification. The primary means by which identification occurs is the attempt to understand others by taking their perspectives as well as attempting to elicit understanding from them. Hence, Freud proposed that social identification is the process by which humans regulate all important social attachments—a notion central to his theorizing. For example, in discussing his theory of psychological structure, Freud (1933/1965) wrote:

The basis of this process is what is called an “identification”—that is to say, the assimilation of one ego to another one, as a result of which the first ego behaves like the second in certain respects, imitates it and in a sense takes it up into itself…. It is a very important form of attachment to someone else (p. 56).

Although Freud was the first to emphasize the primacy of social identification in cognition, his students translated the insight into a language that may have better communicated the social character of healthy individual cognition. For example, each of Erikson's (1959) stages of human development involve social validation of one kind or another for successful resolution. Jung (1934) emphasized the necessity of individual consciousness to find resolution with shared cultural values. Bowlby (1969) wrote that “the young child's hunger for his mother's love and presence is as great as his hunger for food.” Indeed, Sullivan's (1953) interpersonal theory of psychology articulated psychodynamic theory in a way that resonates unmistakably with Mead's (1934) emphasis on perspective taking in cognition:

By the end of childhood, the pressure toward socialization has almost invariably fixed a big premium on carefully sorting out that which is capable of being agreed to by the authority figure. This is the first very vivid manifestation in life of the role of consensual validation, by which I mean that a consensus can be established with someone else. (Sullivan, 1953, p. 224)

Hence, two great traditions of classical psychology—Jamesian social behaviorism and Freudian psychodynamics—not only emphasized the interdependence of social and cognitive activity, but converged on a similar social-cognitive synthesis. Yet each synthesis had a distinct flavor. Although both emphasized the essential role of perspective taking in cognition, the social behaviorists focused most on its epistemic functions, whereas the psychodynamic theorists focused most on its relational functions.¹ As discussed later, shared reality theory represents an attempt to integrate these two motivations within a single social-cognitive framework.

Relationships and Epistemics in Classical Social Psychology

Early social-psychological theorists also began with the social-cognitive assumption of interdependence, but did so from a perspective borne of a world ravaged by revolution, war, and genocide (e.g., Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Asch, 1952; Heider, 1958; Le Bon, 1896; Lewin, 1935; Sherif, 1936). Although the epoch produced a social psychology defined by an interest in the social foundations of knowledge, it represented a kind of neo-rationalism in which the power of society to structure individual thought was not merely acknowledged but conceived as a threat to individual rationality (cf. DeCartes, 1647/1970; Russell, 1912). Hence, both the relational and epistemic motivational strands of social cognition dominant in classical psychology survived, although most American social-psychological theorists viewed the two motivations as essentially binary and competing (for critiques, see Baumeister, 1987; Geertz, 1973; Fiske et al., 1998; Markus & Kitayama, 1994; Triandis, 1995; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherall, 1987). With few exceptions since, social psychologists have assumed that cognitive integrity is defined by the degree to which individuals are able to resist social influence, whether it be interpersonal, group based, or imputed through more broadly societal or cultural means. Consequently, social psychologists have studied social influence in terms of its power to delude the individual, as evidenced, for example, by the pejorative labels used to characterize it, including conformity (e.g., Milgrim, 1961), groupthink (e.g., Janis, 1982), deindividualization (Zimbardo, 1962), and social loafing (e.g., Latane & Darley, 1969)—and, indeed, by the fact that the preeminent journal of the fledgling discipline was entitled Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.

Some contemporary theorists have criticized this perspective as peculiarly “Western” (e.g., Fiske et al., 1998; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1995), characterizing it as an individualistic conception of personhood arising from cultural prescriptions for people to be unique, free, and unbounded by social relationships. However, we find it notable that proponents of intellectual individualism expressly assumed that their prescriptions were neither endorsed nor practiced by people in general (e.g., Descartes, 1647/1970; Nietzche, 1954/1977; Russell, 1912; Sartre, 1933). Moreover, intellectual individualism appears to resonate with the broader ideology of the Judeo-Christian canon, which views individual resistance to worldly social influence as impossible but laudable (e.g., Bloom, 1992). From our perspective, however, it is notable that resistance to worldly influence in the Judeo-Christian tradition does not occur in a social vacuum, but rather is enacted to affirm one's relationship with God as well as the earthly community of believers. Finally, although social psychology is fairly characterized as subscribing to a paradigm in which the otherwise rational individual is pi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Contributors
• Part I. The Motives Driving Social Cognition
• Part II. Building Blocks of Social Cognition: Representation and Structure
• Part III. Subjective Perception and Motivated Judgment
• Part IV. Control Over Cognition and Action
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index