Memory for Real People

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This investigator will conduct empirical and theoretical research on memory for information about people and the construction of social categories. The first set of studies surveys the functions that memory serves in everyday social life and explores the contents and organization of peoples' memories for their acquaintances and for public figures they "meet" through public media. Two primary questions motivate the research plan: How does function determine memory contents and structure? Do memories of emotion-provoking individuals differ from those of neutral, non-evocative individuals? A second set of studies occurs in controlled, laboratory "get acquainted" tasks and is designed to study the effects of social goals on subjects" memories of other people they encounter in laboratory interactions. The primary motivation underlying these studies is to test the generality of results from previous laboratory person memory research in social interactions with actual people. A third set of studies is concerned with a separate topic, the creation of conjunction categories for novel social groups (e.g., male nurses, female mechanics, etc.). The guiding question here concerns the development of a theory to predict the manner in which two "ingredient" categories will be combined to yield a new conjunction category. The Principal Investigator is well known as a strong and productive scholar.