Social Comprehension and Judgment

The Role of Situation Models, Narratives, and Implicit Theories

Robert S. Wyer, Jr.

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2003
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135636173
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Written by one of the foremost authorities in social cognition, Social Comprehension and Judgment examines how people process information encountered in their everyday lives. In the book, Dr. Wyer proposes a new theory about the way in which information acquired in everyday life is comprehended and represented in memory, and how it is later used as a basis for judgments and decisions. A major emphasis throughout is on the construction and use of narrative representations of knowledge and the way that visual images influence the comprehension of these narratives and the judgments based on them. The role of affective reactions in this cognitive activity is also discussed.

Social Comprehension and Judgment is divided into three sections. Part I provides a conceptual overview by outlining the general theoretical framework focusing on assumptions about the storage and retrieval of information and reviews recent research on the impact of knowledge accessibility on judgments and decisions. Part II deals with the comprehension of information, and examines the role of these processes in impression formation, persuasion, and responses to humor. Part III describes the inferences that are based on information conveyed in social situations.


This book is ideal for advanced students and researchers interested in the areas of social cognition or social information processing.

PART
I

INTRODUCTION AND BASIC CONCEPTS

CHAPTER
1

Introduction

Human memory is a collection of thousands of stories we remember through experience, stories we remember by having heard them, and stories we remember by having composed them. Any story in memory could have gotten there in one of these three ways. The key point is that, once these stories are there in our memory, we rely upon them for all that we can say and understand. . . .

—Schank and Abelson (1995, p. 3)

Schank and Abelson (1995) argued that virtually all the meaningful social knowledge we acquire is in the form of stories. This claim is probably overstated (Brewer, 1995; Rubin, 1995). Nevertheless, the role of narratives in the acquisition and transmission of information in daily life is undeniable. The content of everyday conversations almost invariably includes stories we tell about ourselves and personal acquaintances, descriptions of books we have read or movies we have seen, and jokes that we tell to one another. Narratives are also invoked in the course of understanding the causes or likely consequences of real and hypothetical social events (e.g., the outcome of a presidential election, or the India–Pakistan dispute over Kashmir). Persuasive messages and television commercials often stimulate us to imagine the sequence of events that might result from taking a particular course of action. Life itself is in the form of a narrative, consisting of a sequence of temporally related events that we experience as either participants or observers. In short, narratives are fundamental to an understanding of ourselves and of the world in which we live.

The importance of narrative forms of knowledge is recognized in virtually every area of psychology. Research and theory on prose comprehen- sion and learning have long been concerned with the comprehension and mental representation of stories and temporally ordered sequences of events (Graesser, 1981; Mandler & Johnson, 1977; Stein & Glenn, 1979). Developmental psychologists (e.g., Miller, 1994; Nelson, 1993) have identified the role of stories in parent–child interaction and socialization more generally. Narrative forms of knowledge can often constitute implicit theories that people use both to explain their own and others’ past experiences and to predict the future (Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Ross, 1989). The influence of these theories on behavior and judgments has been identified in research on topics as diverse as personal achievement (Dweck, 1975), predictions of future life events (Oishi, Wyer, & Colcombe, 2000), marital relations (Holmes & Murray, 1995; Murray & Holmes, 1996), personality development (McAdams, 1988) and community–individual relations (Mankowski & Rappaport, 1995).

Despite the consideration of narratives in these specific areas of research, few attempts have been made to develop a broader theoretical formulation of social information processing that permits their influence to be conceptualized in relation to that of other types of knowledge that people encounter in their daily lives. Several types of knowledge representations are likely to exist (Pennington & Hastie, 1993), and their role in information processing can differ. One must understand the factors that govern the retrieval of this knowledge, how it is used to comprehend and construe the implications of new information to which it is relevant, and the nature of its influence on judgments and behavioral decisions about its referents.

This book attempts to provide this understanding. In particular, it is concerned with the comprehension and use of information of the sort people encounter in the course of their daily lives. This information can be obtained through direct experience, from movies and television, from reading newspapers, or from conversations with friends or strangers. The information can be transmitted in writing but also visually or acoustically. Moreover, it can be conveyed in several modalities simultaneously. Finally, although the information can sometimes concern hypothetical people and situations, it more often refers to actual persons and events about which recipients already have substantial knowledge. Finally, the information is often conveyed in a social context, and can elicit affective or emotional reactions toward either its referent or, in some cases, the communicator. Much of this information, particularly that which is acquired through direct experience, is necessarily transmitted in the form of a narrative, that is, a temporally related sequence of events.

The conceptualization we propose addresses the way this information is comprehended and represented in memory, and how it is later recalled and used in making judgments and decisions. Our focus on “real-world” information processing does not imply that the research we bring to bear on it has not been conducted in controlled laboratory settings. In fact, most of the research reported is of this variety. However, the type of information of concern in this research, the referents of the information, the context in which it was presented, and the type of judgments and decisions for which it had implications, is similar to that encountered in daily life situations. The results of this research, and the formulation we bring to bear on it, are consequently more likely to generalize to nonlaboratory situations than work we have done in the past.

In this introductory chapter, we review the different types of knowledge people acquire in their daily lives, and discuss briefly the various ways this knowledge is represented in memory. Chapter 2 describes the theoretical formulation of information processing within which the research and theory discussed later is conceptualized. This formulation has features in common with the earlier formulation proposed by Wyer and Srull (1989). However, it is modified in several important ways that permit it to account for the comprehension and use of information about familiar persons and events of the sort we acquire in daily life. Chapter 3, another introductory chapter, discusses the determinants and effects of knowledge accessibility, which is central to much of the theory and research presented in later chapters.

Part II of the book is devoted to the representation of knowledge about social events and its role in comprehension. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the sorts of representations that people form specifically in the course of comprehending social events that they either read about or directly experience. Chapter 5 also discusses the more abstract event representations that are formed in the course of deliberative goal-directed activity. Chapter 6 addresses the extent to which generalized event representations can influence the representations that are formed of situation-specific occurrences, and the impact of forming abstract representations of an experience on later memory for the experience. Chapter 7 considers the effects of the situational context in which information is presented on its comprehension. Finally, chapter 8 applies the conceptualization developed in previous chapters to a phenomenon that has received surprisingly little attention in research on social information processing but is a central ingredient of communication outside the laboratory: namely, the reactions to humor.

Part III of this volume examines the use of social information to make judgments and behavioral decisions. Chapter 9 focuses specifically on the way verbal and visual information combine to affect judgments under conditions in which narrative representations of information are and are not likely to be constructed. Chapter 10 considers more generally the impact of narrative representations of knowledge on judgment, focusing largely on the impact of implicit theories that people construct and use as a basis for inferences about specific events. Finally, chapter 11 addresses an issue largely ignored in previous chapters but nevertheless of central importance in understanding the effects of information in situations outside the laboratory, namely, the impact of affective reactions on judgments of the persons, objects, and events to which these reactions are (or, in some cases, are not) relevant.

The conceptualization proposed in this volume has been largely stimulated by research conducted in our own laboratory during the past 15 years. However, its implications for phenomena identified in other areas are considered as well. We therefore hope that the conceptualization provides a perspective on the dynamics of information processing in everyday life situations that is not only useful in integrating a variety of known phenomena but suggests new directions for research and theorizing.

TYPES OF SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE

Social knowledge can vary in terms of its referent (what the knowledge is about), its modality (verbal, visual, or affective), the generality of its implications, and the way in which it is acquired (through direct experience, or through cognitive operations that are performed on other cognitive material). Two types of knowledge should be distinguished at the outset. Declarative knowledge concerns the referents of our everyday life experience (e.g., persons, objects, events, social issues that we read about, or oneself). In contrast, procedural knowledge concerns the sequence of actions that one performs in pursuit of a particular goal (driving a car, using a word processor, etc.). Whereas declarative knowledge is reflected in the information we can recall about an entity or that we implicitly draw on in the course of attaining a particular objective, procedural knowledge is reflected in the sequence of cognitive or motor acts that are actually performed in the pursuit of this objective. People can of course have declarative knowledge about how to attain a particular objective, and might sometimes consult this knowledge for use as a behavioral guide. Once the procedure is well learned, however, it may often be applied automatically, with little if any conscious cognitive mediation.

These automated procedures can be conceptualized as “productions” of the sort suggested by J. R. Anderson (1982, 1983; see also E. R. Smith, 1990). Thus, they may metaphorically have the form of “If [X], then [Y]” rules in which [X] is a configuration of perceptual or cognitive stimulus features and [Y] is a sequence of cognitive or motor acts that are elicited automatically when the eliciting conditions are met. These productions, which are acquired through learning, are strengthened by repetition, and can ultimately be activated and applied with minimal cognitive mediation. The routines involved in driving a car (e.g., putting in the clutch, turning on the ignition, putting the car in gear, gradually releasing the clutch while stepping on the gas, etc.) initially require conscious thought. However, they ultimately come to be performed without consultation of one’s declarative knowledge about the sequence of steps involved, and require few if any cognitive resources (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977). As Bargh (1997) asserted, a very large amount of our social behavior is likely to involve the use of these automatically activated productions.

Procedural knowledge plays a very important role in social information processing, as I indicate frequently throughout this volume. For the present, however, I will concentrate my discussion on the content and structure of declarative knowledge. I first consider the referents of this knowledge, and the modality in which it is acquired. I then turn briefly to the different ways in which this knowledge is represented in memory, and discuss the need to understand these matters in conceptualizing the processing of information of the sort we receive in the course of daily life.

Referents of Social Knowledge

The stimulus information that impinges on us in a given social situation can often far exceed our capacity to assimilate its implications. In a conversation, for example, several persons typically communicate to one another both verbally and nonverbally, and in doing so, are likely to convey information about not only the topic under discussion but also about themselves. Moreover, this information is often transmitted in the context of many other situational stimuli that are largely irrelevant to either the topic at hand or the individuals who are discussing it. We are usually not passive recipients of this information. Rather, we actively try to determine its meaning. Furthermore, we might construe its implications for the attainment of a particular goal that we have in mind. In doing so, however, we necessarily pay more attention to some features than to others. The features that receive the greatest attention depend in part on our perception of the referent (i.e., what the information is supposed to be about).

The referent of a piece of information can be either an entity (a person or object, a place, oneself, etc.) or an event. However, most events involve persons and objects and occur in a specific (although perhaps unspecified) location. Furthermore, one’s knowledge about an entity often concerns events in which the entity has been involved. As a consequence, the referent of information is often subjective, depending on not only the context in which the information is received but also the interests and objectives of the recipient. For example, consider the statement, “Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in Zaire.” This statement could be about Ali, Foreman, or the event itself. In some cases, of course, perceptions of the referent of information are determined by the context in which the information is received. Thus, someone who hears the aforementioned statement during a discussion of Muhammad Ali is likely to identify Ali as its referent, whereas someone who reads the statement in a magazine article about boxing might consider the event itself to be the referent. In addition, however, individual differences in prior knowledge and motivation (e.g., whether one is a fan of Muhammad Ali or George Foreman) can also influence perceptions of a statement’s referent. These situational and individual differences in perception of the referent can have an impact on how the knowledge is represented in memory and the likelihood that the knowledge comes to mind later. For example, a person who learns that Ali knocked out Foreman in a conversation about Ali, and consequently perceives Ali to be the referent, may not recall the information later when information about George Foreman is being discussed. (For further discussion of this possibility, see Wyer & Srull, 1989.)

Furthermore, when the information conveyed in a particular situation is detailed and complex, recipients are likely to think more extensively about features that pertain to its referent (as they perceive it) than other features. Thus, the referent-related features are likely to be retained, whereas more peripheral features seem to be forgotten. For example, a man who learns that V. S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature might remember the specific context in which he acquired the information a short time after it was conveyed. Over time, however, the information becomes part of his general knowledge and the conditions that led to its acquisition are not recalled.¹

Affect and Emotion. Although the referents of knowledge are usually external to the organism, internally generated stimulation can also be a source of information. (See Strack and Deutsch, 2002, for a theoretical analysis of these alternative sources of information.) For example, external stimuli can elicit affective or emotional reactions, and these reactions can be used as bases for both thoughts and overt responses to the stimuli (Schwarz & Clore, 1983, 1996; Wyer & Carlston, 1979). This does not mean that affective reactions per se are part of stored knowledge. Rather, they are conditioned or unconditioned responses to cognitions about their referent, and can sometimes be the referents of cognitions, but they are not themselves part of the cognitive system (Wyer, ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• PART I: INTRODUCTION AND BASIC CONCEPTS
• PART II: COMPREHENSION PROCESSES
• PART III: INFERENCE PROCESSES
• APPENDIX: SUMMARY OF POSTULATES
• REFERENCES