An ideal text for undergraduate- and graduate-level courses, this accessible yet authoritative volume examines how people come to know themselves and understand the behavior of others. Core social-psychological questions are addressed as students gain an understanding of the mental processes involved in perceiving, attending to, remembering, thinking about, and responding to the people in our social world. Particular attention is given to how we know what we know: the often hidden ways in which our perceptions are shaped by contextual factors and personal and cultural biases. While the text's coverage is sophisticated and comprehensive, synthesizing decades of research in this dynamic field, every chapter brings theories and findings down to earth with lively, easy-to-grasp examples.

This handbook provides a comprehensive review of social cognition, ranging from its history and core research areas to its relationships with other fields. The 43 chapters included are written by eminent researchers in the field of social cognition, and are designed to be understandable and informative to readers with a wide range of backgrounds.

The volume begins with a historical overview of the self in social judgment and outlines the major issues. Subsequent chapters, all written by leading experts in their respective areas, identify and elaborate four major themes regarding the self in social judgment: · the role of the self as an information source for evaluating others, or what has been called 'social projection' · the assumption of personal superiority as reflected in the pervasive tendency for people to view their characteristics more favorably than those of others · the role of the self as a comparison standard from or toward which other people's behaviors and attributes are assimilated or contrasted · the relative weight people place on the individual and collective selves in defining their attributes and comparing them to those of other people

This volume presents a selection of the papers presented at the International Conference on Cognition, Social Cognition and the Question of the Self, and some original contributions by well-known scholars on these topics. Its main purpose is to present the European studies on the self from a social cognitive perspective. The first part (introduced by A Greenwald and M Jarymowicz) focuses on the sociopsychological processes linked to the self when it acts as a reference point or as a prototype in social perception. In the second part (introduced by W Doise), the authors analyze the social conditions, particularly group membership, that modify the functioning of such processes. The third part (introduced by J-M Monteil) contributes to the debate on the relationship between cognition and social cognition.

Neuroimaging Personality, Social Cognition, and Character covers the science of combining brain imaging with other analytical techniques for use in understanding cognition, behavior, consciousness, memory, language, visual perception, emotional control, and other human attributes. Multidimensional brain imaging research has led to a greater understanding of character traits such as honesty, generosity, truthfulness, and foresight previously unachieved by quantitative mapping. This book summarizes the latest brain imaging research pertaining to character with structural and functional human brain imaging in both normal individuals and those with brain disease or disorder, including psychiatric disorders.By reviewing and synthesizing the latest structural and functional brain imaging research related to character, this book situates itself into the larger framework of cognitive neuroscience, psychiatric neuroimaging, related fields of research, and a wide range of academic fields, such as politics, psychology, medicine, education, law, and religion. - Provides a novel innovative reference on the emerging use of neuroimaging to reveal the biological substrates of character, such as optimism, honesty, generosity, and others - Features chapters from leading physicians and researchers in the field - Contains full-color text that includes both an overview of multiple disciplines and a detailed review of modern neuroimaging tools as they are applied to study human character - Presents an integrative volume with far-reaching implications for guiding future imaging research in the social, psychological and medical sciences, and for applying these findings to a wide range of non-clinical disciplines such as law, politics, and religion - Connects brain structure and function to human character and integrates modern neuroimaging techniques and other research methods for this purpose

This book presents social, cognitive and neuroscientific approaches to the study of self-control, connecting recent work in cognitive and social psychology with recent advances in cognitive and social neuroscience. In bringing together multiple perspectives on self-control dilemmas from internationally renowned researchers in various allied disciplines, this is the first single-reference volume to illustrate the richness, depth, and breadth of the research in the new field of self control.

It is always enlightening to inquire about the origins of a research en deavor or a particular theoretical approach. Beginning with the observa tion of the mental life of the infant in 1962, Michael Lewis has contrib uted to the change in the view of the infant as an insensate mass of confusion to a complex and intellectual being. Anyone fortunate enough to have participated in the infancy research of the 1960s knows how exciting it was to have discovered in this small creature such a full and complex organism. More central to the origins of this work was the perception of the infant as an interactive, not a reactive, organism, and as one who influenced its social environment and constructed its cogni tive life, not one who just passively received information. Other areas of psychology had already begun to conceptualize the organism as active and interactive, even while developmental psychologists still clung to either simple learning paradigms, social reinforcement theories, or reflex ive theories. Even though Piaget had proposed an elaborate interactive theory, it was not until the late 1960s that his beliefs were fully im plemented into developmental theory and practice. A concurrent trend was the increase of concern with mother-infant interactions (Ainsworth, 1969; Bowlby, 1969; Goldberg & Lewis, 1969; Lewis & Goldberg, 1969) which provided the impetus for the study of social and emotional as well as cognitive development.