This edition of the "Handbook" follows the first edition by 10 years. The earlier edition was a promissory note, presaging the directions in which the then-emerging field of social cognition was likely to move. The field was then in its infancy and the areas of research and theory that came to dominate the field during the next decade were only beginning to surface. The concepts and methods used had frequently been borrowed from cognitive psychology and had been applied to phenomena in a very limited number of areas. Nevertheless, social cognition promised to develop rapidly into an important area of psychological inquiry that would ultimately have an impact on not only several areas of psychology but other fields as well.
The promises made by the earlier edition have generally been fulfilled. Since its publication, social cognition has become one of the most active areas of research in the entire field of psychology; its influence has extended to health and clinical psychology, and personality, as well as to political science, organizational behavior, and marketing and consumer behavior. The impact of social cognition theory and research within a very short period of time is incontrovertible. The present volumes provide a comprehensive and detailed review of the theoretical and empirical work that has been performed during these years, and of its implications for information processing in a wide variety of domains.
The handbook is divided into two volumes. The first provides an overview of basic research and theory in social information processing, covering the automatic and controlled processing of information and its implications for how information is encoded and stored in memory, the mental representation of persons -- including oneself -- and events, the role of procedural knowledge in information processing, inference processes, and response processes. Special attention is given to the cognitive determinants and consequences of affect and emotion. The second book provides detailed discussions of the role of information processing in specific areas such as stereotyping; communication and persuasion; political judgment; close relationships; organizational, clinical and health psychology; and consumer behavior.
The contributors are theorists and researchers who have themselves carried out important studies in the areas to which their chapters pertain. In combination, the contents of this two-volume set provide a sophisticated and in-depth treatment of both theory and research in this major area of psychological inquiry and the directions in which it is likely to proceed in the future.

This edition of the "Handbook" follows the first edition by 10 years. The earlier edition was a promissory note, presaging the directions in which the then-emerging field of social cognition was likely to move. The field was then in its infancy and the areas of research and theory that came to dominate the field during the next decade were only beginning to surface. The concepts and methods used had frequently been borrowed from cognitive psychology and had been applied to phenomena in a very limited number of areas. Nevertheless, social cognition promised to develop rapidly into an important area of psychological inquiry that would ultimately have an impact on not only several areas of psychology but other fields as well.
The promises made by the earlier edition have generally been fulfilled. Since its publication, social cognition has become one of the most active areas of research in the entire field of psychology; its influence has extended to health and clinical psychology, and personality, as well as to political science, organizational behavior, and marketing and consumer behavior. The impact of social cognition theory and research within a very short period of time is incontrovertible. The present volumes provide a comprehensive and detailed review of the theoretical and empirical work that has been performed during these years, and of its implications for information processing in a wide variety of domains.
The handbook is divided into two volumes. The first provides an overview of basic research and theory in social information processing, covering the automatic and controlled processing of information and its implications for how information is encoded and stored in memory, the mental representation of persons -- including oneself -- and events, the role of procedural knowledge in information processing, inference processes, and response processes. Special attention is given to the cognitive determinants and consequences of affect and emotion. The second book provides detailed discussions of the role of information processing in specific areas such as stereotyping; communication and persuasion; political judgment; close relationships; organizational, clinical and health psychology; and consumer behavior.
The contributors are theorists and researchers who have themselves carried out important studies in the areas to which their chapters pertain. In combination, the contents of this two-volume set provide a sophisticated and in-depth treatment of both theory and research in this major area of psychological inquiry and the directions in which it is likely to proceed in the future.

In this volume, Berkowitz develops the argument that experiential and behavioral components of an emotional state are affected by many processes: some are highly cognitive in nature; others are automatic and involuntary. Cognitive and associative mechanisms theoretically come into play at different times in the emotion-cognition sequence. The model he proposes, therefore, integrates theoretical positions that previously have been artificially segregated in much of the emotion-cognition literature.
The breadth of the implications of Berkowitz's theory is also reflected in the diversity of this book's companion chapters. Written by researchers whose work focuses on both social cognition and emotion, these articles provide important insights and possible extensions of the "cognitive-neoassociationistic" conceptualization developed in the target article. Although each chapter is a valuable contribution in its own right, this volume, taken as a whole, is a timely and important contribution both to social cognition and to research and theory on emotion per se.

If anyone deserves the title "father of social cognition," it is William J. McGuire who, along with his wife and colleague Claire V. McGuire, has written the target article for this volume. The culmination of many years of work, the article discusses their highly developed theory of human thought systems, and establishes many new directions for theoretical and empirical inquiry. Equally important, however, are the chapters -- written from many different theoretical and empirical perspectives -- that challenge various assumptions underlying the McGuires' work. In addition to examining implications not explicitly considered in the target article, these contributions explore the new directions that future research and theorizing might take.

This volume presents a new conceptualization of personality and social cognition that addresses both traditional and new issues. Written for students of personality, experimental and consumer psychology and cognitive science.

In Volume 3, Eliot R. Smith of Purdue University proposes that social cognition theorists have placed excessive emphasis on the role of schemata, prototypes, and various other types of abstractions. This has affected both the methodologies they use and the type of theories they construct. What has not been adequately appreciated is the storage and retrieval of specific episodes, especially those with idiosyncratic features. This volume s designed as a required text for those studying personality, experimental and consumer psychology, cognitive science, and communications.

The first comprehensive theoretical formulation of the way people use information they receive about their social environments to make judgments and behavioral decisions, this volume focuses on the cognitive processes that underlie the use of social information. These include initial interpretation, the representations used to make inferences, and the transformation of these subjective inferences into overt judgment and behavior. In addition, it specifies the role of affect and emotion in information processing, and the role of self-knowledge at different stages of processing. The theoretical model presented here is the first to provide a conceptual integration of existing theory and research in all phases of social information processing. It not only accounts for the major portion of existing research findings, but permits several hypotheses to be generated concerning phenomena that have not yet been empirically investigated. Although focused here on the processing of information about people and events, the formulation proposed has implications for other domains such as personnel appraisal, political decision making, and consumer behavior.

This volume presents different perspectives on a dual model of impression formation -- a theory about how people form impressions about other people by combining information about a person with prior knowledge found in long-term memory. This information is of real importance to graduate students and advanced undergraduates in cognitive and social psychology, experimental psychology, social cognition and perception. Each volume in the series will contain a target article on a recent theoretical development pertinent to current study followed by critical commentaries offering varying theoretical viewpoints. This productive dialogue concludes with a reply by the target article author. The first volume of the series presents an evaluation of theoretical advances in social cognition and information processing from new and different perspectives. Volume 2 presents a new conceptualization of personality and social cognition by Cantor and Kihlstrom which addresses both new and old issues. The volumes in this series will interest and enlighten graduate and advanced undergraduates in cognitive and social psychology, experimental psychology, social cognition and perception. The first volume of the series presents an evaluation of theoretical advances in social cognition and information processing from new and different perspectives. Each volume in the series will contain a target article on a recent theoretical development pertinent to current study followed by critical commentaries offering varying theoretical viewpoints. This productive dialog concludes with a reply by the target article author. The information provided in Volume 1 promises to enrich graduate and advanced undergraduates in cognitive and social psychology, experimental psychology, social cognition and perception. This first volume of the series evaluates the theoretical advances made in social cognition and information processing from new and different perspectives. This unique and lively interchange between the target article author and the critics will enrich and enlighten psychologists from many disciplines. Each volume in the series will contain a target article on a recent theoretical development pertinent to current study followed by critical commentaries offering varying theoretical viewpoints. This productive dialog concludes with a reply by the target article author. The first volume of the series presents an evaluation of theoretical advances in social cognition and information processing from new and different perspectives. Volume 2 presents a new conceptualization of personality and social cognition by Cantor and Kihlstrom which addresses both new and old issues. All volumes in this series will interest and enlighten graduate and advanced undergraduates in cognitive and social psychology, experimental psychology, social cognition and perception.

The first comprehensive theoretical formulation of the way people use information they receive about their social environments to make judgments and behavioral decisions, this volume focuses on the cognitive processes that underlie the use of social information. These include initial interpretation, the representations used to make inferences, and the transformation of these subjective inferences into overt judgment and behavior. In addition, it specifies the role of affect and emotion in information processing, and the role of self-knowledge at different stages of processing. The theoretical model presented here is the first to provide a conceptual integration of existing theory and research in all phases of social information processing. It not only accounts for the major portion of existing research findings, but permits several hypotheses to be generated concerning phenomena that have not yet been empirically investigated. Although focused here on the processing of information about people and events, the formulation proposed has implications for other domains such as personnel appraisal, political decision making, and consumer behavior.

Written by one of the foremost authorities in social cognition, Social Comprehension and Judgment examines how people process information encountered in their everyday lives. In the book, Dr. Wyer proposes a new theory about the way in which information acquired in everyday life is comprehended and represented in memory, and how it is later used as a basis for judgments and decisions. A major emphasis throughout is on the construction and use of narrative representations of knowledge and the way that visual images influence the comprehension of these narratives and the judgments based on them. The role of affective reactions in this cognitive activity is also discussed. Social Comprehension and Judgment is divided into three sections. Part I provides a conceptual overview by outlining the general theoretical framework focusing on assumptions about the storage and retrieval of information and reviews recent research on the impact of knowledge accessibility on judgments and decisions. Part II deals with the comprehension of information, and examines the role of these processes in impression formation, persuasion, and responses to humor. Part III describes the inferences that are based on information conveyed in social situations. This book is ideal for advanced students and researchers interested in the areas of social cognition or social information processing.

Written by one of the foremost authorities in social cognition, Social Comprehension and Judgment examines how people process information encountered in their everyday lives. In the book, Dr. Wyer proposes a new theory about the way in which information acquired in everyday life is comprehended and represented in memory, and how it is later used as a basis for judgments and decisions. A major emphasis throughout is on the construction and use of narrative representations of knowledge and the way that visual images influence the comprehension of these narratives and the judgments based on them. The role of affective reactions in this cognitive activity is also discussed. Social Comprehension and Judgment is divided into three sections. Part I provides a conceptual overview by outlining the general theoretical framework focusing on assumptions about the storage and retrieval of information and reviews recent research on the impact of knowledge accessibility on judgments and decisions. Part II deals with the comprehension of information, and examines the role of these processes in impression formation, persuasion, and responses to humor. Part III describes the inferences that are based on information conveyed in social situations. This book is ideal for advanced students and researchers interested in the areas of social cognition or social information processing.

The use of social sterotypes as a basis for judgments and behavioral decisions has been a major focus of social psychological theory and research since the field began. Although motivational and cognitive influences on stereotyping have been considered, these two general types of influence have rarely been conceptually integrated within a common theoretical framework. Nevertheless, almost every area of theoretical and empirical concern in social cognition--areas such as the interpretation of new information, memory and retrieval processes, impression formation, the use of heuristic vs. analytic processing strategies, the role of affect in information processing, and self-esteem maintenance--has implications for this important social phenomenon.
This volume's target article brings together the research of Galen Bodenhausen, Neil Macrae, and others within a theoretical framework that accounts for the processes that underlie both the activation of stereotypes and attempts to suppress their influence. They consider several stages of processing, including:
*the categorization of a stimulus person;
*the influence of this categorization on the interpretation of information about the stimulus person; and
*the social judgments and behavioral decisions that are ultimately made.
The stereotype activation and suppression mechanisms that the target article authors consider operate at all of these stages. Their conceptualization provides a framework within which the interrelatedness of processing at these stages can be understood.
The 11th in the series, this volume includes companion articles that help to refine and extend the target article's conceptualization and make important theoretical contributions in their own right. They are written by prominent researchers in cognitive and social psychology, many of whom are active contributors to research and theory on stereotyping. They address the following topics:
* the role of power and control in stereotype-based information processing;
* the influence of prejudice;
* self-regulatory processes;
* social categorization;
* the correction processes that result from perceptions of bias; and
* the conceptualization of stereotypes themselves.

As Skinner argued so pointedly, the more we know about the situational causes of psychological phenomena, the less need we have for postulating internal conscious mediating processes to explain those phenomena. Now, as the purview of social psychology is precisely to discover those situational causes of thinking, feeling, and acting in the real or implied presence of other people, it is hard to escape the forecast that as knowledge progresses regarding social psychological phenomena there will be less of a role played by free will or conscious choice in accounting for them. In other words, because of social psychology's natural focus on the situational determinants of thinking, feeling, and doing, it is inevitable that social psychological phenomena increasingly will be found to be automatic in nature.
This 10th book in the series addresses automaticity and how it relates to social behavior. The lead article, written by John Bargh, argues that social psychology phenomena are essentially automatic in nature, as opposed to being mediated by conscious choice or reflection. Bargh maintains that an automatic mental phenomenon is that which occurs reflexively whenever certain triggering conditions are in place; when those conditions are present, the process runs off autonomously, independently of conscious guidance. In his lead article, he focuses on these "preconscious" automatic processes that can be contrasted with "postconscious" and "goal-dependent" forms of automaticity which depend on more than the mere presence of environmental objects or events. Because social psychology, like automaticity theory and research, is also largely concerned with phenomena that occur whenever certain situational features or factors are in place, social psychology phenomena are essentially automatic. Students and researchers in social and cognitive psychology will find this to be a provocative addition to the series.

Until recently, most theory and research in social information processing has focused attention on the cognitive activity that underlies responses to stimulus information presented in the immediate situation being investigated. In contrast, people's thoughts outside the laboratory often concern life events that either have occurred in the past or are likely to occur in the future. Thoughts about such past and future events can be spontaneous and, once elicited, can affect the ability to respond effectively to the demands of the present situation with which one is confronted.
This ninth volume in this series focuses on this type of cognitive activity and examines both its determinants and consequences. The lead article, by Leonard Martin and Abraham Tesser, develops a theoretical formulation of ruminative thinking that conceptualizes rumination as a class of conscious thought with a common instrumental theme that recurs in the absence of immediate environmental demands. The authors also give particular attention to the ways in which perceptions of the consequences of past and present events for long-range goal attainment affect both controlled and uncontrolled thinking about these events. They also examine the implications of their theory for the ability to suppress unwanted thoughts, the interplay of emotion and cognition, and the cognitive consequences or rumination for the performance of daily life activities. The entire formulation integrates a number of cognitive phenomena that are not usually considered within a single theoretical framework.
The companion chapters, many written by the field's foremost contributors to the literature on emotion and cognition, suggest important refinements and extensions of the conceptualization proposed in the target article. They also make important conceptual contributions in their own right, covering topics that include the role of mental models in cognitive functioning, the dynamics of thought suppression and attentional inhibition, stress and coping, personality correlates of ruminative thought, and attitudes and persuasion. As a result, this volume makes a valuable contribution to research and theory not only in social cognition but also in numerous other areas.

Narrative forms of mental representation and their influence on comprehension, communication and judgment, have rapidly become one of the main foci of research and theory in not only psychology but also other disciplines, including linguistics, sociology, and anthropology. No one has been more responsible for the awakening of interest in this area than Roger Schank and Bob Abelson. In their target article, they argue that narrative forms of mental representation, or "stories," are the basic ingredients of social knowledge that play a fundamental role in the comprehension of information conveyed in a social context, the storage of this information in memory, and the later communication of it to others. After explicating the cognitive processes that underlie the construction of narratives and their use in comprehension, memory and communication, the chapter authors consider the influence of stories on a number of more specific phenomena, including political judgment, marital relations and memory distortions that underlie errors in eyewitness testimony.
The provocativeness of the target chapter is matched by that of the companion articles, each of which not only provides an important commentary on Schank and Abelson's conceptualization, but also makes an important contribution to knowledge in its own right. The diversity of perspectives reflected in these articles, whose authors include researchers in linguistics, memory and comprehension, social inference, cognitive development, social judgment, close relationships, and social ecology, testifies to the breadth of theoretical and empirical issues to which the target chapter is potentially relevant. This volume is a timely and important contribution to research and theory not only in social cognition but in many other areas as well.

In this volume, Berkowitz develops the argument that experiential and behavioral components of an emotional state are affected by many processes: some are highly cognitive in nature; others are automatic and involuntary. Cognitive and associative mechanisms theoretically come into play at different times in the emotion-cognition sequence. The model he proposes, therefore, integrates theoretical positions that previously have been artificially segregated in much of the emotion-cognition literature.
The breadth of the implications of Berkowitz's theory is also reflected in the diversity of this book's companion chapters. Written by researchers whose work focuses on both social cognition and emotion, these articles provide important insights and possible extensions of the "cognitive-neoassociationistic" conceptualization developed in the target article. Although each chapter is a valuable contribution in its own right, this volume, taken as a whole, is a timely and important contribution both to social cognition and to research and theory on emotion per se.

In Volume 3, Eliot R. Smith of Purdue University proposes that social cognition theorists have placed excessive emphasis on the role of schemata, prototypes, and various other types of abstractions. This has affected both the methodologies they use and the type of theories they construct. What has not been adequately appreciated is the storage and retrieval of specific episodes, especially those with idiosyncratic features. This volume s designed as a required text for those studying personality, experimental and consumer psychology, cognitive science, and communications.

If anyone deserves the title "father of social cognition," it is William J. McGuire who, along with his wife and colleague Claire V. McGuire, has written the target article for this volume. The culmination of many years of work, the article discusses their highly developed theory of human thought systems, and establishes many new directions for theoretical and empirical inquiry. Equally important, however, are the chapters -- written from many different theoretical and empirical perspectives -- that challenge various assumptions underlying the McGuires' work. In addition to examining implications not explicitly considered in the target article, these contributions explore the new directions that future research and theorizing might take.

In Volume 3, Eliot R. Smith of Purdue University proposes that social cognition theorists have placed excessive emphasis on the role of schemata, prototypes, and various other types of abstractions. This has affected both the methodologies they use and the type of theories they construct. What has not been adequately appreciated is the storage and retrieval of specific episodes, especially those with idiosyncratic features. This volume s designed as a required text for those studying personality, experimental and consumer psychology, cognitive science, and communications.

The feedback model of self-regulation developed by the authors of the lead article in this volume has been one of the most successful theoretical formulations of regulatory processes to date. The range of phenomena to which this framework potentially applies is evident from its ability to incorporate implications of other conceptualizations as diverse as catastrophe theory and dynamic systems theory. The diversity of issues and approaches dealt with by Carver and Scheier is matched by the companion articles, which are written from perspectives ranging across developmental psychology, cognitive science, clinical psychology, and organizational decision making, as well as mainstream social cognition.

The feedback model of self-regulation developed by the authors of the lead article in this volume has been one of the most successful theoretical formulations of regulatory processes to date. The range of phenomena to which this framework potentially applies is evident from its ability to incorporate implications of other conceptualizations as diverse as catastrophe theory and dynamic systems theory. The diversity of issues and approaches dealt with by Carver and Scheier is matched by the companion articles, which are written from perspectives ranging across developmental psychology, cognitive science, clinical psychology, and organizational decision making, as well as mainstream social cognition.

If there is one topic on which we all are experts, it is ourselves. Psychologists depend upon this expertise, as asking people questions about themselves is an important means by which they gather the data that provide much of the evidence for psychological theory. Personal recollections play an important role in clinical theorizing; people's thoughts, feelings, and beliefs provide the principal data for attitudinal research; and judgments of one's traits and descriptions of one's goals and motivations are essential for the study of personality. Yet despite their long dependence on self-report data, psychologists know very little about this basic resource and the processes that govern it. In spite of the importance of the self as a concept in psychology, virtually no empirically-tested representational models of self-knowledge can be found. Recently, however, several theoretical accounts of the representation of self-knowledge have been proposed. These models have been concerned primarily with the factors underlying a particular type of self knowledge -- our trait conceptions of ourselves. The models all share the starting assumption that the source of our knowledge of the traits that describe us is memory for our past behavior.
The lead article in this volume reviews the available models of the processes underlying trait self-descriptiveness judgments. Although these models appear quite different in their basic representational assumptions, exemplar and abstraction models sometimes are difficult to distinguish experimentally. Presenting a series of studies using several new techniques which the authors believe are effective for assessing whether people recruit specific exemplars or abstract trait summaries when making trait judgments about themselves, they conclude that specific behavioral exemplars play a far smaller role in the representation of trait knowledge than previously has been assumed. Finally, the limitations of social cognition paradigms as methods for studying the representation of long-term social knowledge are discussed, and the implications of the research for both existing and future social psychological research are explored.