Abstract
Social cognition research has generated widespread interest in recent years. Although researchers may differ in the specific concepts and methods they have in mind when they speak of “social cognition”, they generally agree that the ultimate goal of their research is to identify the cognitive processes that presumably mediate people’s responses to the information they encounter in social contexts. The “input” variables of concern include the content, source, and context of information available in the social environment. Prominently studied “output” variables include attitudes, beliefs, judgments, and occasionally, overt physical behavior. The objective of social cognition research is to specify the cognitive processes linking these variables.
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Bodenhausen, G.V., Wyer, R.S. (1987). Social Cognition and Social Reality: Information Acquisition and use in the Laboratory and the Real World. In: Hippler, HJ., Schwarz, N., Sudman, S. (eds) Social Information Processing and Survey Methodology. Recent Research in Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4798-2_2
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