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.

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 book explores new points of view of human memory in the link among mind, brain, and society. Research of human memory traditionally has been in the field of experimental psychology, and a number of psychological researchers have come upon important findings regarding human memory. They have provided critical theories to explain human memory processes, but this approach is hitting a brick wall. The experimental psychological approach or laboratory-based approach to human memory functions is examined in a very controlled environment, but the evidence obtained from this approach may not necessarily reflect real-life events in our mind. In addition, findings from experimental psychology have often ignored the link with biological structures, or the brain. One solution is a cognitive neuroscience approach, in which functional neuroimaging techniques have enabled us to view how memory processes are represented in the brain. In addition, the new approach extends the traditional concept of human memory into a wider framework by reconsidering memory functions in a social context. These advanced approaches help us to understand how “social memory” is represented in the human brain and is processed in real-life situations. The work reported in this volume is at the forefront of cognitive neuroscience in the research of human memory in a social context and the potential application of memory research. This book will help to motivate young scientists and graduate and undergraduate students in psychology and neuroscience.

How do we use our mental images of the present to reconstruct our past? Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) addressed this question for the first time in his work on collective memory, which established him as a major figure in the history of sociology. This volume, the first comprehensive English-language translation of Halbwach's writings on the social construction of memory, fills a major gap in the literature on the sociology of knowledge. Halbwachs' primary thesis is that human memory can only function within a collective context. Collective memory, Halbwachs asserts, is always selective; various groups of people have different collective memories, which in turn give rise to different modes of behavior. Halbwachs shows, for example, how pilgrims to the Holy Land over the centuries evoked very different images of the events of Jesus' life; how wealthy old families in France have a memory of the past that diverges sharply from that of the nouveaux riches; and how working class construction of reality differ from those of their middle-class counterparts. With a detailed introduction by Lewis A. Coser, this translation will be an indispensable source for new research in historical sociology and cultural memory. Lewis A. Coser is Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the State University of New York and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Boston College.

In Social Memory and History, a group of anthropologists, sociologists, social linguists, gerontologists, and historians explore the ways in which memory reconstructs the past and constructs the present. A substantial introduction by the editors outlines the key issues in the understanding of social memory: its nature and process, its personal and political implications, the crisis in memory, and the relationship between social and individual memory. Ten cross-cultural case studies—groups ranging from Kiowa songsters, Burgundian farmers, elderly Phildelaphia whites, Chilean political activists, American immigrants to Israel, and Irish working class women—then explore how social memory transmits culture or contests it at the individual, community, and national levels in both tangible and symbolic spheres.

Ecological/cognitive approach applied to self-narrative.

Venturing out of the laboratory into the wild of natural settings, it becomes untenable to locate memory strictly in the head. Instead, memory appears as a materially extended and socially distributed process, embedded within culture and history. This book explores the complex relations between practices of remembering and the settings in which they are enacted. It advances a novel set of concepts developed from ecological, cognitive, cultural and narrative currents in psychology and further afield to analyze (1) trajectories of autobiographical remembering, (2) the relation between individual and collective memory, (3) memory and cultural transmission, as well as (4) various methodological techniques to investigate memory in the wild.