Table Of ContentCOGNITIVE ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
NATO ADVANCED STUDY INSTITUTES SERIES
Proceedings of the Advanced Study Institute Programme, which aims at the dissemination
of advanced knowledge and the formation of contacts among scientists from different
countries.
The series is published by an international board of publishers in conjunction with NATO
Scientific Affairs Division
A Life Sciences Plenum Publishing Corporation
B Physics London and New York
C Mathematical and D. Reidel Publishing Company
Physical Sciences Dordrecht and Boston
D Behavioural and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
Social Sciences The Hague, Boston and London
E Applied Sciences
Series D: Behavioural and Social Sciences - No. 13
COGNITIVE ANALYSIS OF
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on "The Cognitive Analysis of
Socio-Psychological Processes", Aix-en-Provence, France, July 12-31, 1981
edited by
Jean-Paul Codol, Ph.D.
Universite de Provence
Laboratoire de Psychologie Socia Ie
Aix-en-Provence
France
and
Jacques-Philippe Leyens, Ph.D.
Universite Catholique de Louvain
Faculte de Psychologie
Louvain-Ia-Neuve
Belgium
I
1982
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
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Library or Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Cognitive analysis of social behavior.
(NATO advanced study institutes series. Series D,
Behavioural and social sciences ; v. 13)
Fifth summer school organized by the European Associa
tion of Experimental Social Psychology.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Social psychology--Congresses. I. Codol, Jean-Paul.
II. Leyens, Jacques Philippe. III. European Association
of Experimental Social Psychology. IV. Series.
HM251.c643 1982 302 82-7903
ISBN-13: 978-94-009-7614-6 AACR2
ISBN-13: 978-94-009-7614-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-7612-2
001: 10.1007/978-94-009-7612-2
Copyright © 1982 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1982
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers,
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, P. O. Box 566, 2501 CN The Hague, The Netherlands.
v
PREFACE
The fifth Summer School organized by the European Associa
tion of Experimental Social Psychology was held in Aix-en-Proven
ce (France, from July 12 to 31, 1981. Previous schools had
taken place in The Hague (The Nederlands) in 1966, Leuven
(Belgium) in 1967, Konstanz (Germany) in 1972 and in Oxford
(Great-Britain) in 1976.
an
This is important activity of the European Association
and has always met with great success. This time, 130 applica
tions were received while only 50 could be accepted, given the
format adopted for the Summer School. They represented many
different countries and institutions.
To fully understand the aims of such a Summer School, es
pecially of the present one, it is probably best to consider
first its organization.
Participants were graduates or young postdoctoral students
in experimental social psychology. For three weeks they worked
in five teams of ten participants each under the mentorship of a
senior researcher. Each of five staff members had suggested
a special topic of study in which they were interested, well be
fore the start of the session. This enabled the teams to be de
termined early enough for the participants to be able to prepare
for the sessions. In Aix, in the magnificent surroundings of an
old convent, afternoons (and often evenings as well) were spent
discussing theoretical issues arising from the suggested topics
and in planning research to test specific hypotheses. Some groups
ran pilot studies and analyzed them or worked on data already
collected before the Summer School. The topics investigated co
vered different areas connected to cognitive approaches of social
psychology :
- Application of reasearch in cognitive psychology to the study
of attitudes and opinions (E. Burnstein)
- Perception des similitudes et differences entre individus
(J.P. Codol)
- L'identite sociale (J.C. Deschamps)
- The attribution theory (J.M.F. Jaspars)
- Implicit personality theories: How they change (J.Ph. Leyens)
In previous Summer Schools, English had been the only working
language. However, this time two groups were conducted in French
(lead by Jean-Paul Codol and Jean-Claude Deschamps) and the other
VI
three groups. in English. The organizers, however, had carefully
constituted the groups so that no language discrimination between
them would occur: for instance, French speaking natives parti
cipated in "English" teams and vice-versa.·
In this organization, mornings were devoted to lectures deli
vered by the staff members or by well-known invited speakers.
More will be said about these later since the lectures constitute
the content of the present work.
One important word now about the financial aspect of the
enterprise. Board and lodging are offered to all participants
so that money does not constitute the ultimate criterion of
selection (for participants and for their country of or~g~n as
well). This very basic goal was achieved thanks the support of
NATO who contributed on behalf of those participants coming from
NATO countries. For the other participants, funds were obtained
from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France),
the Universite de Provence, and some European laboratories.
Needless to say that we, are most grateful to all these institu
tions for their help. Our debt to them will become even more appa
rent when we have specified our aims in conducting such Summer
Schools.
Training in experimental social psychology exists in most
countries but its quality can vary tremendously. This is due to
differences in national financial constraints and, also, to dif
ferences in the rate of development of that science in various
countries. Also, it seems that European social psychologists
often have more contacts with colleagues of other continents than
with their own continent. All of our Summer Schools have tried
to compensate for this heterogeneity maintaining cultural
~
specificities and identities. With that in mind, Mediterranean
countries were our special "targets" in this particular Summer
School. As usual, we are confident that we succeeded in another
aim : special intellectual liaisons were effected resulting in
joint programs of research involving several countries which are
now ongoing.
The title of the Iix-en-Provence Summer School Was :
"The cognitive analysis of socio-psychological processes". The
present book tries to convey some bits of its extremely stimu
lating atmosphere.
VII
The first two chapters of this volume argue that behavior, and
especially social behavior, has been a neglected entity, at least
at the theoretical level. Indeed, both Jaspars and Upmeyer assert
that there has been an overemphasis on verbal responses as substi
tutes for behavior in situ; this state of affairs may explain why
social psychology has always so badly needed a theory of corres
pondence between cognitions or attitudes and behavior. Jaspars,
then, presents two versions of a dual representation model to
show how representations and behavior can be related to each other
in a multivariate model by a system of rules. Upmeyer, on the
other hand, develops nis model of attitude and illustrates how an
internal representation should be approached across different mo
dalities.
How is it that the impact of communication has so to
lit~le
do with the recall of its content? This question, which goes back
to attitude polarization studies, is raised by Burnstein and
Schul in the following chapter. They show, empirically, how the
persuasiveness of implicit information can be analysed at diffe
rent stages of a processing model. These stages are respectively
initial encoding, elaborative encoding, integration and decision.
This approach undoubtedly gives a new flavor to the field of so
cial influence and has implications as well for other areas such
as artificial intelligence, for instance.
"At the beginning are the social representations"; so, at
least, pleads Moscovici in chapter 4. According to this author,
the history of (cognitive) social psychology can be divided into
three phases, each of them characterized by a well-known concept:
social attitudes, social cognitions and finally social representa
tions. Moscovici does not like Agatha Christie's hero, Hercule
Poirot, and is unhappy with the present research on social cogni
tions. To him, this research is old concepts in new wrappings.
Before speaking of biases and errors, one should consider the
relevant social representations.
This latter idea is pursued empirically by Flament. This
specialist of graph theory analyses the (cognitive) schemata which
underly the equilibrium bias discovered by Heider. His results
lead him to conclude that this bias can only be fully understood
given the social representation of an egalitarian and undifferen
tiated group.
VIII
In chapter 6, and within the general framework of implicit
personality theories, Leyens asks three questions. Are psycho
logists more prone than others to favor dispositional explana
tions? Is it an error? Does it have detrimental consequences?
All the answers are : yes. Some general suggestions are offered
concerning the causes of this state of affairs and its remedies.
Palmonari is also interested in the work of psychologists
and tells us how Italian psychologists perceive psychology and
their work or practice. Four different representations emerge
and they have stro~g implications for the Italian psychologists'
training, profession and identity. One of the aims of this re
search was to find ways to build a new curriculum for Italian
psychologists; the social representations of their discipline is,
however, so heterogeneous and dogmatic that the author concludes
that they cannot serve the aim he had envisaged.
In chapter 8, Tajfel opens what could be considered as the
last section of this volume. He selectively reviews in it some of
the experimental studies he and his team have recently conducted
on intergroup behavior. He does so by linking the experiments
around a few central processes and concepts : social categorization,
social comparison and social identity.
Some of these ideas are developped by Deschamps in the follo
wing chapter. In four experiments, this author shows that there
is a covariation between inter-group and inter-individual cate
gorizations (or differentiations) : one leads to the other and
vice versa.
Finally, in the last chapter of this volume, it is the con
cept of identity which is reviewed. Codol attempts to define
what should be understood by "personal" and "social" identities.
Within this framework, he discusses investigations about the
search for similarities and differences with other people. In
his opinion, the search for differences is most important.
Let us hope this volume will also offer a flavor of "diffe
rences" to his readers.
IX
Claude Flament was the director of the Summer School.
Jean-Claude Alric prepared it. Marie-France Pichevin was success
ful in overcoming all the practical problems. When typing the
manuscripts, Roseline Van Dyck attempted to master the idiosyn
chrasies of each of them. Elisabeth Sousa and Jose Marques
helped in the preparation of the indices. To all of them we
owe a great debt.
Jean-Paul Codol,
Jacques-Philippe Leyens.
XI
CONTENTS
Preface ...................•......•.....................
V
Contents ....................•.......................... XI
J.M.F. JASPARS
Social Judgement and social behaviour : A dual representation
model ...........•.•.•.........•.................•.... 1
The social legacy of gestaltpsychology •••••••••••• 1
Pseudo-cognitions and substitute behaviour •••••••• 7
Attribution, integration, representation and eva-
Iuation ........................................ . 9
Cognitive representation, social judgments and
social behaviour ..••••••.•••••••••.•••.••••••••• 20
The dual representation of social reality ••••••••• 23
A path analytical model •••••••••••••••••••••• 23
A multivariate model .•.•••••..••••.•.•.••.•.• 32
References .....•.................................. 44
A. UPMEYER
Attitudes and social behaviour ••••••••••••••••••••••••• 51
Introduction ..................................... . 51
Historical background •••••••..•....•.•...•..•..•.. 53
The measurement approach ••••••••••••••••••••• 53
Cognitive consistency •••••••••••••••••••••••• 54
The prediction model ••••••••••••••••••••••••• 55
Unsolved problems .•••••••.....•....•...•...••••.•. 57
The origins of attitudes ••••••••••••••••••••• 57
Selection of beliefs ••••••••••••••••••••••••• 58
Selection of attitude objects •••••••••••••••• 58
Object evaluation and object choice •••••••••• 59
Causal links ..•.•.••••••.•••.....••..••.•.••. 59
Defining behaviour .••.•••••••••.•.••...••••.. 62
Goal directed attitudes and behaviour.r ••••••••••• 63
Goal-att i tude ........................•....... 64
Instrumental attitude •••••••••••••••••••••••• 65
Judgements, announcements and behaviour ••••••••••• 66
Cross-modality matching •••••••••••••••••••••• 66
Biases in two-alternative responses •••••••••• 68
Biases in magnitude responses •••••••••••••••• 70
Stimulation for related literature ••••••••••• 71
