Social Cognition

How do we make sense of other people and of ourselves? What do we know about the people we encounter in our daily lives and about the situations in which we encounter them, and how do we use this knowledge in our attempt to understand, predict, or recall their behavior? Are our social judgments fully determined by our social knowledge, or are they also influenced by our feeling...

How do we make sense of other people and of ourselves? What do we know about the people we encounter in our daily lives and about the situations in which we encounter them, and how do we use this knowledge in our attempt to understand, predict, or recall their behavior? Are our social judgments fully determined by our social knowledge, or are they also influenced by our feelings and desires?Social cognition researchers look at how we make sense of other people and of ourselves. In this book Ziva Kunda provides a comprehensive and accessible survey of research and theory about social cognition at a level appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers in the field.The first part of the book reviews basic processes in social cognition, including the representation of social concepts, rules of inference, memory, "hot" cognition driven by motivation or affect, and automatic processing. The second part reviews three basic topics in social cognition: group stereotypes, knowledge of other individuals, and the self. A final chapter revisits many of these issues from a cross-cultural perspective.

齐瓦·孔达（Ziva Kunda, 1955-2004），社会心理学家，从事动机化推理和社会认知领域的研究。她从美国密歇根大学获得博士学位，师从于美国著名社会心理学家理查德·尼斯贝特，后担任加拿大滑铁卢大学心理学教授。2004年不幸因癌症英年早逝。她为社会认知领域作出了卓越贡献，1990年发表了社会心理学历史上具有开创性的论文《动机化推理的案例》，并于2006年被美国实验社会心理学会授予首届“科学影响力”奖暨终身成就奖。