Attitudes and Stereotypes as Socially Situated Cognition

该研究计划建立在“情境认知”的概念之上，其中包括认知进化为指导适应行为的思想，以及动机和情感被适当地认为是认知的一部分。这种新颖的观点与主流社会心理学的复杂理论和经验知识的整合导致了两个解决不同实质性领域的项目。这些项目使用多种方法，包括计算机模拟连接网络，以及对人类参与者进行的基于实验室的实证研究。一个项目致力于提高对态度和陈规定型观念的心理表征的理解。一组研究使用计算机模拟来调查态度的功能属性（它们在行动指导中的作用）如何与它们的表征属性（如评价启动）相关，这是以前没有画出的联系。对人类参与者的实证研究将检验态度表征将态度对象与自我联系起来的假设（来自情境认知方法）。进一步的研究将测试这一假设，即社会群体的表征强调的不是群体的内在品质（如人格特质），而是他们与感知者自己的内群体的关系。第二个项目旨在了解个人心理表征和沟通过程的相互关系。情境认知观认为，认知不仅仅发生在孤立的个体头脑中，而是通过社会互动和交流。这些研究专门针对语言在从一个人到另一个人的心理表征的隐性沟通方面的作用。该研究计划的更广泛的目标是促进情境认知观点与主流社会心理学的整合，并提高对态度，刻板印象，人际交往和社会影响等社会重要现象的科学理解。

This program of research builds on the concept of "situated cognition", which includes the ideas that cognition evolved to direct adaptive behavior, and that motivation and emotion are properly considered a part of cognition. Integration of this novel viewpoint with the sophisticated theoretical and empirical knowledge of mainstream social psychology leads to two projects addressing different substantive areas. The projects use multiple methods, including computer simulations of connectionist networks, and empirical laboratory-based studies with human participants. One project works toward increasing understanding of the mental representation of attitudes and stereotypes. One set of studies uses computer simulations to investigate how the functional properties of attitudes (their role in the guidance of action) relate to their representational properties such as evaluative priming, a link that has not previously been drawn. Empirical studies with human participants will test the hypothesis (flowing from the situated cognition approach) that attitude representations link attitude objects to the self. Additional studies will test the hypothesis that representations of social groups emphasize not the groups' intrinsic qualities (such as personality traits), but rather their relationship to the perceiver's own in-groups. A second project is aimed at understanding interrelationships of individual mental representations and communication processes. The situated cognition perspective holds that cognition occurs not just in an isolated individual mind, but through social interaction and communication. These studies specifically address the role of language in implicitly communicating aspects of mental representations from one person to another. The broader goals of this research program are to contribute to the integration of the situated cognition perspective with mainstream social psychology, and, to enhance scientific understanding of such socially important phenomena as attitudes, stereotypes, interpersonal communication, and social influence.