Social
Cognition
Cognition has constituted a central preoccupation in human
intellectual history. This is not surprising given that cognition
constitutes a distinctive feature of Homo sapiens. The questions
'What is knowledge,’ and ‘How is knowledge acquired and used?' have
been at the center of human inquiry for time immemorial. The form
of these questions have varied throughout human history depending
on the prevailing paradigms within which they were raised, may
these be religious, philosophical or scientific.
The last 50 years have seen concerted multidisciplinary (e.g.,
psychology, psycho-linguistics, neurosciences, computer sciences,
anthropology, philosophy) efforts that have changed the ways of
conceptualizing how knowledge is acquired, processed, and used in
dramatic ways. Characteristically, these developments have led to a
computational or an information-processing view. This handle on
cognition has shaped the development of robust, sophisticated, and
cumulative bodies of theory concerning such issues as the nature of
mental representations, the impact of accessible representations on
judgments, and the factors affecting people's use of simple
heuristic cues versus more systematic processing.
Unfortunately, these insights have largely neglected the fact
that cognition is for action and adaptation rather than merely
computation. This is a view that has often been overlooked although
it dates back to William James, Lev Vygotsky, Sir Frederic
Bartlett, inter alia. The evolution of cognition has taken place
against a background of finding solutions to problems arising in
natural or cultural contexts. These solutions are of a social
origin. The function of cognition is therefore the control of
socially adaptive action. Because of the importance of adaptation
to specific and varying situations, cognition and action constitute
the emergent outcome of dynamic processes of interaction between an
agent and an environment. The examination of cognition can
therefore not be regarded as a phenomenon that is located at an
intra-individual level alone (i.e. located in an individual or a
brain). However, adaptive action is inevitably constrained by our
physical make-up. To that extent, cognition as action is embodied.
Cognition is about the control of adaptive action at a social or
inter-personal level. This is why social cognition occupies a
central position in the development of the field of cognition and
its science as a whole.
One of the major challenges towards understanding cognition is
about how knowledge is acquired, stored, and used across different
social and cultural contexts. Indeed, the "situation" in
which cognition takes place is, almost always, a social situation
defined by an individual's group memberships, personal
relationships, and communicative purposes. Broadly, the field of
social cognition investigates the ways people perceive, interact
with, and influence each other, studying specific topics such as
person perception, group prejudice and stereotyping, personal
relationships, group processes, persuasion, and social
influence.
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pre-escon conferences |
social cognition |
european social cognition
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