Attitudes and Stereotypes as Socially Situated Cognition

这一研究项目建立在“情境认知”的概念之上，其中包括认知进化为指导适应性行为的观点，以及动机和情感被适当地视为认知的一部分。这种新颖的观点与主流社会心理学复杂的理论和经验知识相结合，导致两个项目涉及不同的实质性领域。这些项目使用多种方法，包括连接网络的计算机模拟，以及以人类参与者为基础的实证实验室研究。其中一个项目致力于加深对态度和刻板印象的心理表征的理解。一组研究使用计算机模拟来调查态度的功能属性（它们在指导行动中的作用）与它们的表征属性（如评价启动）之间的关系，这是一个以前没有被发现的联系。对人类参与者的实证研究将验证态度表征将态度客体与自我联系起来的假设（来自情境认知方法）。更多的研究将验证这样一个假设，即社会群体的表征强调的不是群体的内在品质（如人格特征），而是它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交流过程的相互关系。情境认知观点认为，认知不仅发生在孤立的个人头脑中，而且还发生在社会互动和交流中。这些研究特别关注语言在一个人与另一个人之间隐性沟通心理表征方面的作用。本研究计划更广泛的目标是促进情境认知视角与主流社会心理学的整合，并加强对态度、刻板印象、人际沟通和社会影响等重要社会现象的科学理解。

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.