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The Forms of Social Awareness

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Personality, Roles, and Social Behavior

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Social Psychology ((SSSOC))

Abstract

The theme of this chapter can be expressed in two simple observations. The first is that a person can think about different things. The second is that even in thinking about one thing, the person may do so from different perspectives. Because these observations can be made with remarkable frequency in daily life, their importance is often cloaked in what Heider (1958) called the “veil of obviousness.” We hope to open the veil a bit for these deceptively commonplace ideas by introducing a systematic way of understanding their profound influence on social behavior. This analysis begins with an exploration of what it means to think about different things from different perspectives in the course of social encounters. We then define several forms of social awareness-states of mind in which the person is consciously aware of a specific range of social experience from a specific point of view. After identifying some personal and situational antecedents of these forms, we turn finally to an outline of the crucial behavioral effects that can be traced to their variations.

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Authors
  1. Daniel M. Wegner
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  2. Toni Giuliano
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, 63121, USA

    William Ickes

  2. Psychology and Human Development, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Green Bay, Wisconsin, 54302, USA

    Eric S. Knowles

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Wegner, D.M., Giuliano, T. (1982). The Forms of Social Awareness. In: Ickes, W., Knowles, E.S. (eds) Personality, Roles, and Social Behavior. Springer Series in Social Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9469-3_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9469-3_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-9471-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-9469-3

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