Which of the following are reasons why individuals construct their social reality?

How do people think about the world? How do individuals make sense of their complex social environment? What are the underlying mechanisms that determine our understanding of the social world?

Social cognition - the study of the specific cognitive processes that are involved when we think about the social world - attempts to answer these questions. Social cognition is an increasingly important and influential area of social psychology, impacting on areas such as attitude change and person perception. This introductory textbook provides the student with comprehensive coverage of the core topics in the field: how social information is encoded, stored and retrieved from memory; how social knowledge is structured and represented; and what processes are involved when individuals form judgements and make decisions.

The overall aim is to highlight the main concepts and how they interrelate, providing the student with an insight into the whole social cognition framework. With this in mind, the first two chapters provide an overview of the sequence of information processing and outline general principles. Subsequent chapters build on these foundations by providing more in-depth discussion of memory, judgemental heuristics, the use of information, hypothesis-testing in social interaction and the interplay of affect and cognition. Social Cognition will be essential reading for students and researchers in psychology, communication studies, and sociology.

Abstract

Although trust is an underdeveloped concept in sociology, promising theoretical formulations are available in the recent work of Luhmann and Barber. This sociological version complements the psychological and attitudinal conceptualizations of experimental and survey researchers. Trust is seen to include both emotional and cognitive dimensions and to function as a deep assumption underwriting social order. Contemporary examples such as lying, family exchange, monetary attitudes, and litigation illustrate the centrality of trust as a sociological reality.

Journal Information

Social Forces is a journal of social research highlighting sociological inquiry but also exploring realms shared with social psychology, anthropology, political science, history, and economics. The journal's intended academic readers include sociologists, social psychologists, criminologists, economists, political scientists, anthropologists, and students of urban studies, race/ethnic relations, and religious studies.

Publisher Information

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. It currently publishes more than 6,000 new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs more than 5,500 people worldwide. It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and academic journals.

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2nd Edition

Copyright Year 2018

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Book Description

Social cognition is a key area of social psychology, which focuses on cognitive processes that are involved when individuals make sense of, and navigate in their social world. For instance, individuals need to understand what they perceive, they learn and recall information from memory, they form judgments and decisions, they communicate with others, and they regulate their behavior. While all of these topics are also key to other fields of psychological research, it’s the social world—which is dynamic, complex, and often ambiguous—that creates particular demands.

This accessible book introduces the basic themes within social cognition and asks questions such as: How do individuals think and feel about themselves and others? How do they make sense of their social environment? How do they interact with others in their social world? The book is organized along an idealized sequence of social information processing that starts at perceiving and encoding, and moves on to learning, judging, and communicating. It covers not only processes internal to the individual, but also facets of the environment that constrain cognitive processing.

Throughout the book, student learning is fostered with examples, additional materials, and discussion questions. With its subdivision in ten chapters, the book is suitable both for self-study and as companion material for those teaching a semester-long course. This is the ideal comprehensive introduction to this thriving and captivating field of research for students of psychology.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: What is Social Cognition Research About?2. General Framework of Social Cognitive Processing 3. Perceiving and Encoding 4. Storing and Retrieving Information 5. Using Information: Controlled and Automatic Processing of Information 6. Using Information: Judgmental Shortcuts 7. The Interplay of Cognition and Feelings: Mood States 8.The Interplay of Cognition and Feelings: Fluency 9. Communicating Information 10. How the Environments Constrains Social Cognitive Processing Glossary References

Author(s)

Biography

Rainer Greifeneder is professor of Social Psychology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. His research focuses on various aspects of social cognition, such as the experienced ease or difficulty of thinking, and social exclusion.

Herbert Bless is professor of Microsociology and Social Psychology at the University of Mannheim, Germany. His research addresses the construction of social judgment and the interplay of affect and cognition.

Klaus Fiedler is professor of Social Psychology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. His research interests include judgment and decision making, social cognition, language and communication, behavior regulation, and methodological issues in behavioral science.

Reviews

"It is terrific to see a Second Edition of this marvelous book. It is a superb review of the literature and a remarkable synthesis of a complex and important area of research. The authors are gifted researchers in the area; they know the relevant work thoroughly; and their perspective throughout is unique and tremendously insightful." -Charles M. Judd, College Professor of Distinction, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado

"Social cognition is emerging as the hub of many areas of scholarship in the neurological, behavioral, and social sciences. This timely book presents a remarkably comprehensive and integrative review of the important lessons learned over the last few decades from theory, methods, and research findings in social cognition. The authors, world-renowned social cognition scholars, convey the rich tapestry of social cognitive phenomena as well as shed light on the underlying basic mechanisms. The authors unravel for us the mysteries of the social mind and help us understand why sociality and cognition are inextricably interwoven. I strongly recommend this authoritative book as a valuable resource for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, as well as researchers and practitioners in the behavioral and social sciences." -

Yaacov Trope, Professor of Psychology, New York University

"This volume, written by some of Germany's leading social psychologists, provides a invaluable overview of the field of Social Cognition. It is a great book about an endlessly fascinating topic, and it is indispensible for anyone who wants to understand how we perceive and interact with our social world."

-Ap Dijksterhuis, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

"Congratulations to the authors! This is an excellent introduction to core principles of social cognition. It illuminates how people make sense of the world in which they live and presents key findings and theories in an involving and easily accessible way. The book will be highly appreciated by students and instructors."

- Norbert Schwarz, University of Southern California

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