APPLYING CONNECTIONIST MODELS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

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DESCRIPTION (Applicant's Abstract): This is an application for continued support of an ongoing program of research on the mental representations and processes that underlie significant phenomena in social psychology, particularly social judgement and inference, person perception, and stereotyping. These topics relate to mental health in several ways. For example, stereotypes contribute to concrete social conditions (such as prejudice and discrimination) that affect many people's mental health, and negative stereotypes also affect people's reactions to the mentally ill. The proposal's major objective is to continue developing and testing a new class of connectionist theoretical models, which are based on the properties of multiple interconnected processing units rather than symbolic representations and rules, within social psychology. Predictions from such models, generated in precise form by computer simulations. Will be compared with results from existing studies and three empirical studies will be conducted under this proposal, on the topics of accessibility of mental representations, stereotype change, and connectionist models of attitudes, motives, and social influence and interaction. The broader goals of this research are (a) to contribute to the further development of connectionist models by relating them to core theories and findings of social psychology; (b) to work toward incorporating social psychology within the increasing integration of various areas of psychology (particularly cognitive, developmental, and behavioral neuroscience) that has been driven by the increased use of connectionist models in many areas; and (c) to use connectionist models to shed new light on key aspects of social judgement and behavior, especially person perception, stereotyping, and prejudice.