Social Cognition: Some Historical and Theoretical Perspectives

Publisher Summary Social cognition is established to serve as a new forum for the ever increasing numbers of investigations. This chapter examines the current theories of social cognition and the intellectual history out of which social cognition has arisen. It also reveals the pervasive and continuing influence of two generic traditions within psychology: associationism and constructionism. It is salutary in the development of social cognition to explore its intellectual history, its associationist, and its constructionist traditions to address the question of whether or not social cognition represents an important theoretical advance. In the chapter, the roots of associationism as well as its present application in social cognition research and the roots of constructionism and its present application in social cognition research are also explored. The central concerns of cognitive psychology are representation and processing. These issues require the building and testing of theoretical constructs and models. The formation or processing of representations is directly observed and introspection regarding cognitive processes is problematic. The chapter also focuses on those investigations of social cognition that explicitly apply associationist or constructionist theory.