Melvin Manis

Mental Exercising Through Simple Socializing: Social Interaction Promotes General Cognitive Functioning

Social interaction is a central feature of peoples life and engages a variety of cognitive resources. Thus, social interaction should facilitate general cognitive functioning. Previous studies suggest such a link, but they used special populations (e.g., elderly with cognitive impairment), measured social interaction indirectly (e.g., via marital status), and only assessed effects of extended interaction in correlational designs. Here the relation between mental functioning and direct indicators of social interaction was examined in a younger and healthier population. Study 1 using survey methodology found a positive relationship between social interaction, assessed via amount of actual social contact, and cognitive functioning in people from three age groups including younger adults. Study 2 using an experimental design found that a small amount of social interaction (10 min) can facilitate cognitive performance. The findings are discussed in the context of the benefits social relationships have for so many aspects of peoples lives.

Availability heuristic in judgments of set size and frequency of occurrence

The availability heuristic has been widely cited as an important factor in the judgment process. However, the evidence that availability is important in judging category size is not fully convincing. Moreover, several reports suggest that availability may not be a factor in judging frequency of occurrence. Path analysis was used in 3 experiments designed to assess the role of memorial availability in judgments of category size and frequency of occurrence. In judging set size, there was consistent support for the availability heuristic; that is, set size judgments were reliably influenced by the contents of memory. By contrast, in accordance with earlier results, availability was not a significant factor when Ss judged frequency of occurrence

Specificity in contrast effects: Judgments of psychopathology

Three experiments were conducted to explore the specificity of the contrast effect in judgments of psychopathology. In the first two studies, respondents initially attempted to infer whether each item in a series of behavior samples (vocabulary definitions in one study, handwriting samples in the second) came from a schizophrenic or a nonschizophrenic patient. Some respondents were presented with highly pathological samples in this induction series, while others were presented with relatively nonpathological samples. These divergent experiences led to marked contrast effects in evaluating test stimuli from the Same behavioral domain (e.g., additional vocabulary definitions), but had significantly less impact on the respondents’ reactions to stimuli from a different domain (e.g., handwriting samples). A third experiment yielded similar results, using a paired-comparison methodology. In this study subjects first judged a series of high- vs low-pathology definitions. They were then presented with a series of matched stimulus pairs, each including one vocabulary definition and one handwriting sample. Respondents were to indicate the member of each pair that seemed more indicative of schizophrenia. People assigned to the high-pathology induction group typically chose the handwriting samples as being more indicative of schizophrenia, compared with respondents who were assigned to the lowpathology conditions. These results were interpreted as supporting a representational (perceptual) theory of contrast.

Cognitive Social Psychology

Social psychology is presently dominated by cognitive theories that emphasize the importance of personal beliefs and in tellective processes as the immediate determinants of behavior. The present paper explores two areas of.research within this tra dition : (1) beliefs about the external world, and (2) beliefs about the self. The paper concludes with a brief critique of the cognitive approach to social psychology.

Comment on Gergen's "Social Psychology as History"

A recent article by Gergen suggests that social psychology cannot reasonably aspire to the general time-independent laws that are characteristic of the physical sciences. Consideration of this thesis suggests that the underlying rationale may place undue reliance on the effects of psychological enlightenment, and on the individuals needs to demonstrate his behavioral freedom and uniqueness. A tentative generali zation suggests that the processes underlying social behavior may be relatively stable, but that they operate on an endless variety of social contents (conditions) to yield the diverse social behaviors and relation ships that we observe.

Cognitive Integration and Referential Communication: Effects of Information Quality and Quantity in Message Decoding

Four experiments are reported in which respondents were presented with one or more written passages, describing the face of an actor who was portraying a particular emotional expression (e.g., surprise). After reading each message ensemble, the respondents attempted to select the appropriate targetreferent from an array of 24 photographs showing the same actor in different emotional poses. The results indicated that performance was consistently affected by the quality of the message ensembles (as quantified by the percentage of relatively accurate descriptions in the set) and by the quantity of information that was available (the number of different descriptive passages in the set). When a message-set was expanded while its overall quality was reduced (by including more and more low-quality descriptions), performance deteriorated. Finally, there was no convincing evidence of information overload; despite substantial expansions in the size of the message-sets that ultimately included as many as 24 different passages, when the quality of the ensembles was held constant, performance did not decline. In a recent series of experiments, Manis and his colleagues (Manis & van Rooijen, 1973; Manis & Platt, 1975, 1976) explored the process of information integration. In contrast to many studies in this domain, these experiments included a criterion of correctness, which made it possible to assess the e~rectiveness with which discrete informational cues were combined. In this work (and in the experiments described below), the respondents task was to decode a number of message-ensembles, each of which contained one or more written descriptions; our goal was to explore the performance levels (hit-rates) that would result when respondents were given several descriptions, all based on the same referent-object, and were asked to select the appropriate referent from a large array of similar stimuli. The procedure devised for these studies is an extension of the

Is Social Psychology Really Different

Gergen (1976), outlines a number of problems that make it difficult to apply general social psychological the ories, or to assess their validity unequivocally. These dif ficulties are not unique to social psychology, however. The application of general scientific principles has never been a simple matter, not even in the well-established physical sci ences. Moreover, there are formidable difficulties in asses sing general theoretical propositions in every field of in quiry, since empirical procedures will inevitably depend on assumptions about local field conditions, the adequacy of meas urement techniques, and the like. As a consequence, if re sults are inconsistent with theoretical expectations, there will always be some uncertainty as to where the problem lies. Social psychologists should not assume that their difficulties are totally unlike those encountered in other fields of sci entific inquiry. The problems raised by Gergen do not, con sequently, rule out the possible development and application of general social psychological theories.

Cognitive Social Psychology and Attitude Change

This chapter is concerned with two topics: (1) the present status of cognitive theories in social psychology, and (2) our present state of knowledge concerning attitude change. In the first section we will consider a number of conceptions that focus on the organized character of our social cognitions. The second section presents a brief summary of major findings in the domain of attitude change, with special emphasis on a cognitive approach to these phenomena.

Response vs. Perception

Three experiments were conducted in which college students read, and then attempted to match, a series of written descriptive passages with the referent photographs on which they were based; the photographs sho wed the face of an actor, representing a variety of emotional expressions. In Experiment I, subjects provided with a series of context passages depicting a narrow range of emotions (neither pleasant nor unpleasant) chose “matches” having more extreme pleasantness values than did subjects provided with context passages depicting a wide range of descriptions on the pleasantness dimension when responding to test descriptions embedded within the context series. In Experiments II and III, contrast effects were obtained; subjects who had read mostly unpleasant context passages chose more pleasant referents in response to neutral test descriptions than did those who had read mostly pleasant descriptions. The results of all three experiments suggested that these effects were mediated in large part by a response bias, the tendency to use each response alternative with roughly equal frequency. In Experiments II and III, there was suggestive evidence for the possibility that a more central (or perceptual) mechanism may also have contributed to the observed results.

Order Effects in the Integration of Verbal Descriptions

Respondents were provided with a series of message ensembles, each of which contained nine descriptions, all based on the same referent-photograph. Their task was to identify the appropriate target-photograph. Descriptions that were presented at the beginning or at the end of a message-set were more influential determinants of choice than those presented in the middle of the series.