Explanatory Coherence in Social Explanation

社会解释中的解释连贯性

• 批准号: 9511554
• 负责人: Stephen Read
• 金额: $ 18.86万
• 依托单位: University of Southern California
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1995
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1995-08-15 至 1999-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9511554&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Explanatory; Coherence; Social; Explanation

In this program of research, a series of experiments tests a parallel processing model of social perception and social explanation. This model differs sharply from the two-stage, serial processing , models that currently dominate much social psychology. One set of studies seeks to demonstrate that when subjects are combining dispositional and situational information, whether they underadjust for either dispositional or situational factors under high cognitive load, and the extent to which they do so, reflects the impact of attentional focus and causal unit formation on the spread of activation in a conceptual network. Such results would contradict Gilbert's (1989) model of dispositonal inference and would, at a minimum, force a major expansion of Krull's (1993) model. A second set of studies attempts to show that just as individuals frequently make spontaneous situational inferences, so do they frequently make spontaneous situaitonal inferences. These studies also seek to show that the latter influences do not require a goal to make such inferences as Krull (1993) suggests, but rather are under the control of the stimulus configuration. Several factors are investigated that may influence the likelihood of spontaneous situational inferences: (1) individualist vs. collectivist beliefs; (2) proximity of the situational causal context to the target behavior; and (3) salience of the situational causal context. A third set of studies examines whether situational and dispositional information can be quickly and spontaneously integrated, in parallel, to make a spontaneous dispositional inference, thereby arguing against models that propose a two step process for the integration of dispositional and situational information. A fourth set of studies will test the hypothesis that factors, such as cognitive load and salience which should reduce the spread of activation from explanations to behavior identifications, will reduce the impact of explanatory hypotheses on the id entification of ambiguous behaviors. This program of research has the potential to replace several special-purpose 'mini' theories of social explanation with a general connectionist model that can handle a wide variety of phenomena. Figuring out the characteristics of others is central to successfully negotiating everyday life. But doing so is surprisingly complicated. This program of research tests a model which seeks to explain how people do this. A central claim of this model is that when people make inferences about the causes of behavior, such as "Sheila was furious", the available information is integrated simultaneously into a limited capacity working memory rather than being processed serially. The implication of this parallel processing of information is that the causal explanation that a person favors (e.g., "Sheila is short tempered" or "Sheila was insulted") will depend upon things that influence information integration, such as the person's focus of attention, the strength of pre-existing causal links among potential causes and effects, and how much demand is being placed on the person's cognitive capacities by other ongoing tasks. The results will have important implications for our understanding of biases in social perception.

在这个研究计划中，一系列的实验测试了社会知觉和社会解释的并行处理模型。 该模型与目前在许多社会心理学中占主导地位的两阶段连续处理模型有很大不同。 一组研究试图证明，当受试者结合气质和情境信息时，他们是否在高认知负荷下对气质或情境因素调整不足，以及他们这样做的程度，反映了注意力集中和因果单位形成对概念网络激活传播的影响。 这样的结果将与吉尔伯特（1989）的倾向性推理模型相矛盾，至少会迫使克鲁尔（1993）的模型进行重大扩展。 第二组研究试图表明，正如个人经常自发的情境推理，他们也经常自发的情境推理。 这些研究还试图表明，后者的影响并不需要一个目标，使这样的推论，如克鲁尔（1993）建议，而是在刺激配置的控制下。 研究了可能影响自发情境推理可能性的几个因素：（1）个人主义与集体主义信念;（2）情境因果背景与目标行为的接近程度;（3）情境因果背景的显著性。 第三组的研究探讨是否可以快速和自发地整合，在平行的情况下，使自发的倾向性推理，从而反对模型，提出了一个两步的过程中整合的倾向性和情境信息。 第四组研究将测试的假设因素，如认知负荷和显着性，应该减少激活的传播从解释到行为识别，将减少解释性假设的影响，识别模糊的行为。 这个研究计划有可能取代几个特殊用途的“迷你”社会解释理论与一般的连接模型，可以处理各种各样的现象。 弄清楚别人的特点是成功应对日常生活的核心。 但这样做是令人惊讶的复杂。 这个研究项目测试了一个试图解释人们如何做到这一点的模型。 这个模型的核心主张是，当人们对行为的原因做出推断时，例如“希拉很生气”，可用的信息被同时整合到有限容量的工作记忆中，而不是被串行处理。 这种信息并行处理的含义是，一个人喜欢的因果解释（例如，“希拉脾气暴躁”或“希拉受到了侮辱”）将取决于影响信息整合的因素，如人的注意力，潜在原因和结果之间预先存在的因果关系的强度，以及其他正在进行的任务对人的认知能力的要求。 这些结果将对我们理解社会感知中的偏见产生重要影响。