Series of Talks on Social Perception and Cognition by Professor Guido Peeters
Our distinguished speaker, Prof. Guido Peeters is a senior academic staff at the Laboratory for Experimental Social Psychology, Catholic University of Leuven. He is interested in evaluative processes and relational information processing. Further information about the speaker can be found at this site.
1. Fundamental Dimensions of Social Perception and Cognition: From Structural to Functional Approach
Date: 16th October 2007
Time:10- 12pm
Venue: FASS Faculty Lounge, AS7 Level 1
Numerous researchers have advanced evidence that social-cognitive organisation is underlain by two evaluative dimensions: (1) a likeableness-related dimension (communion, solidarity, social good/bad, morality, warmth, and so forth, and (2) a power-related dimension (agency, status, intellectual good/bad, dominance, competence, and so forth.), henceforth referred to as the "standard model." Most of the researchers have handled the standard model as a mere structural model: a mathematical construction that accounts for observed variations in social-perceptual contents observed across a variety of conditions. This structural approach did not go on more deeply into the psychological foundation of those dimensions. Actually, the psychological interpretation of the dimensions tended to be limited to some essentialist reading qualifying them as "evaluative" and adding a more or less arbitrary descriptive label (social, intellectual, warmth, competence, etc.) that has some practical value to distinguish between them. For instance, the label "intellectual good/bad" just reflects some item scoring high on the dimension in question, but using high scores as a criterion, the dimension could have been labelled "self-confidence" as well. Alternatively, researchers following a functional approach have focused on the psychological foundation of dimensions in behavioral-adaptive processes through which individuals and societies subsist. Two functional approaches are discussed (1) profitability theory (good/bad for other and good/bad for self) that stresses adaptive functions regarding the individual, and (2) social utility and affordance theory (good/bad for interpersonal relationship and good/bad for society) that stresses adaptive functions on the group level. Finally the functional approach is used to integrate other current models with the standard model (possibly with presentation of unpublished data).
2. Personalisation and Depersonalisation in Social Perception and Cognition: From Structural Theory to Functional Application
Date: 19th October 2007
Time: 10- 12pm
Venue: Research Clusters Meeting Room, AS7 Level 6
An attempt to derive a structural model of social-cognitive organisation from linguistic/cognitive universals has led to a dual process theory stressing two cognitive programs for the processing of social information (1) the SO (Self-Other or Me/You) program that generates personalised--quasi animistic-- representations (e.g., implicit personality theory with the two fundamental evaluative dimensions underlying impressions of personality), and (2) the 3P (Third Person or He/She) program generates depersonalised--quasi scientific--representations. Three methods are described to assess the differential use of SO and 3P programs in human information processing. One main research outcome is that humans seem set for the personalising SO program by default, the depersonalising 3P program requiring particular triggers such as the availability of a culture-specific discourse shaped by the 3P program (e.g. the Western natural sciences discourse). Research has been undertaken and led to, sometimes preliminary, answers to questions such as the following ones:
- Is the use of the third person in scientific writing (e.g.: writing "The experimenter did…" instead of writing "I did…") functional to achieve adequate scientific thinking, as particular publication manuals have claimed? Or is it just highbrow pedantry, as other publication manuals have claimed?
- Are autistic children "3P thinkers" unable to use the personalising SO program?
- Are behavior therapists that rely on depersonalized behaviorist theories not hindered at having authentic humanistic attitudes to their clients (a requirement of a good therapeutic relation)?
- Considering that the self may be pre-eminently a person above all others, should we expect that information about the self is more exclusively dealt with using the personalising SO than information about others is?
- Can we trace the duality of SO and 3P processing in a variety of alternative ways to deal with the same data, situations or events (for instance alternative theories fitting the same research outcomes, alternative concepts of justice, alternative concepts of evaluative meaning, ambiguities underlying the puns of jokes, and so forth).
