Explanatory Coherence in Social Explanation

在这个研究项目中，一系列的实验测试了社会知觉和社会解释的平行加工模型。这个模型与目前主导许多社会心理学的两阶段、连续处理模型截然不同。一组研究试图证明，当被试结合性格和情境信息时，他们在高认知负荷下是否对性格或情境因素调整不足，以及他们这样做的程度，反映了注意焦点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Gilbert（1989）的性格推断模型相矛盾，并且至少会迫使Krull（1993）的模型得到重大扩展。第二组研究试图表明，就像个人经常自发地进行情境推断一样，他们也经常自发地进行情境推断。这些研究还试图表明，后一种影响并不需要目标来做出Krull（1993）所建议的推断，而是在刺激配置的控制下。本文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)情境因果语境与目标行为的接近性；(3)情景因果语境的显著性。第三组研究考察了情景和性格信息是否可以快速自发地并行整合，以做出自发的性格推断，从而反驳了提出性格和情景信息整合两步过程的模型。第四组研究将检验这样一个假设，即认知负荷和显著性等因素将减少从解释到行为识别的激活传播，从而减少解释假设对模糊行为识别的影响。这一研究项目有可能用一种可以处理各种现象的一般联系主义模型取代几种特殊用途的社会解释“迷你”理论。了解他人的特点是成功谈判日常生活的核心。但是这样做是非常复杂的。这个研究项目测试了一个模型，该模型试图解释人们是如何做到这一点的。该模型的一个核心主张是，当人们对行为的原因做出推断时，比如“希拉生气了”，可用的信息会同时整合到有限容量的工作记忆中，而不是按顺序进行处理。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“希拉被侮辱了”）将取决于影响信息整合的因素，例如，人的注意力焦点，潜在因果关系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有多大。研究结果将对我们理解社会知觉中的偏见具有重要意义。

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.