PS470 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Social Cognition, Cognitive Psychology
Document Summary
Social cognition seemed to disregard the kinds of less deliberate, learned responses emphasized by the behaviourists (info processing model seems best suited for handling consciously attended info) Some models (schema, associative network) accomplished much of their work outside the range of conscious attention. Bargh (1982) introduced concept of automaticity into social cognition, and argued people engage in both controlled and automatic processes. Bargh distinguished automatic processes from controlled processed by 4 features: automatic processes initiate without intention, automatic processes occur outside of awareness, automatic processes are difficult to control, automatic processes use little of the mind"s limited capacity. However, he realized very few processes meet all 4 criteria and revised his theory to suggest that processes are relatively more automatic when they possess more of these features and relatively controlled when they possess fewer. Social cognition field now accepts the idea of automaticity and theories of mental representation now routinely accommodate unconscious (implicit) representations/processes and conscious (explicit) ones.
