The Development of Social Cognition

Transcription

1 The Development of Social Cognition

2 The Development of Social Cognition Edited by John B. Pryor Jeanne D. Day Springer-Verlag New York Berlin Heidelberg Tokyo

3 John B. Pryor Department of Psychology Illinois State University Normal, Illinois U.S.A. Jeanne D. Day Department of Psychology University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana U.S.A. With 8 Illustrations Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: The Development of social cognition. Bibliography: p. Includes indexes. 1. Social perception. 2. Attribution (Social psychology) 3. Cognition. I. Pryor, John B. II. Day, Jeanne D. HM132.D ' by Springer-Verlag New York Inc. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1985 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form without written permission from Springer-Verlag, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010, U.S.A. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc., in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone. Typeset by Ampersand Publisher Services, Inc., Rutland, Vermont ISBN-13: : / e-isbn-13:

4 Preface One of the more promising recent developments in the study of social cognition has been the cross-pollination of ideas from the fields of developmental and social psychology. Many social psychologists have come to the conclusion that a complete account of social cognitive phenomena must include not (l!1ly detailed analyses of those processes in their adult form but also an understanding of their origins and development in children. Likewise, in the last ten years psychologists involved in social developmental research have shown an increasing interest in theories and research generated in the adult social cognition literature. Surely among the more important cognitive phenomena to be studied in social development are those that are related to psychological processes in later life. This approaching integration of adult and developmental social psychology is long overdue and promises benefits to research in both disciplines. The goal of this volume is to move the fields toward this synthesis. For this reason, we have put together a collection of original essays by authors who are among the more prominent new researchers in this movement. In selecting topics we have tried to cover areas of recent social cognition research that are of interest to both developmental and adult social psychologists. This volume is divided into three general sections: (1) Attribution and Social Judgment, (2) Moral Development and a Sense of Self, and (3) Social Influences on Cognitive Development. (1) The first section examines two general approaches to social judgments which originally evolved in the adult literature and which are now being fruitfully applied in the developmental literature: the attribution approach and the information integration approach. In the first chapter of this section, Saul Kassin and John Pryor present a general overview of developmental studies of attribution. They discuss how the use of fundamental environmental cues (e.g., ordinal priority, proximity, etc.), the use of abstract attributional principles (e.g., discounting), and cultural learning experiences are all important factors in attributional development. This chapter presents one of the first integrated accounts of how all three of these factors might conjointly determine attributional development.

5 vi Preface In the second chapter, Ken Dodge and Beverly Richard apply the attribution approach to social behavior. One common criticism of social cognition research in both the adult and the child literatures is that it is too infrequently related to actual social behavior. The Dodge and Richard chapter bridges this gap between cognition and behavior by examining how attributional biases mediate the social behaviors of aggressive children. Dodge and Richard discuss the behavioral implications of aggressive children's attributional biases, how these biases originate and develop over time, and how interventions might alter them. In the third chapter, Colleen Surber reviews recent research from the information integration perspective-that is, on how people combine data from two or more sources to make social judgments. She examines major findings from moral judgment, fairness, achievement attribution, roletaking, and person perception literatures. She compares findings from the information integration approach to those based on other methods. Surber also uses the information integration approach to examine the important issue of whether children develop a general schema for reversible operations. (2) Since the time of William James, a sense of self has been assumed to play an important role in psychological processes. Recent research has returned to this theoretical concept with more qualified questions: For example, when does a person's sense of self make a difference (e.g., Wicklund and Frey, 1980)? When do personal attitudes and values, concepts of morality, and notions of fairness influence thought and behavior? In the second section, these issues are addressed. The first two chapters focus more narrowly on an individual's concepts of morality and how they influence thought and behavior, while the third chapter takes a broader view of the general self-system. In the first chapter ofthis section, Steve Rholes and James Lane examine two important issues in moral development. First, when do moral attitudes predict moral behavior? And second, how does behavior influence the development of moral reasoning? In attacking these questions, Rholes and Lane not only demonstrate that a person's level of moral reasoning can be an important mediator of attitude/behavior consistency, but also that the performance of moral behaviors indicative of a higher level of moral reasoning from one previously manifested can lead to growth in one's level of moral reasoning. Rholes and Lane view this growth as a process similar to dissonance reduction. Keith Widaman and Todd Little pursue a different approach to some of the same issues in the second chapter of this section. These authors describe a contextual model of sociomoral development. In this model, a child's level of sociomoral reasoning is viewed as but a single factor in a context of other important cognitive and social variables. The relationship of this network of variables to sociomoral behavior is complex, but understandable. Widaman

6 Preface Vll and Little employ some concepts derived from Ajzen and Fishbein's (1980) theory of reasoned action in an attempt to formulate a model of moral behavior prediction. Two recent developments in the adult social psychological literature on self concern the concept of the self as a memory system (Greenwald, 1981) and the importance of self-directed attention for many social behaviors (Wegner & Vallacher, 1980). In the third chapter in this section, Dan Lapsley and Steve Quintana review the relevant adult literatures and outline the developmental implications of the self-as-memory and the bidirectional focus-of-attention approaches. Subsequently, Lapsley and Quintana provide an excellent integration of these two adult literatures with Selman's (1980) analysis of structural developmentalism. While largely theoretical in content, this chapter seems likely to generate many empirical studies designed to help understand the self as a growing, dynamic entity. (3) The final section of the book examines social influences on intellectual development. Traditionally, cognitive operations are conceptualized as "intraindividual" processes, that is, as existing within individuals and as being relatively unaffected by interpersonal relationships. However, recent research into the intellectual functioning of both adults and children suggests that interpersonal factors do indeed influence "intraindividual" cognitive functions. The basic premise of both chapters in this section is that social and cognitive processes are tightly intertwined in developing individuals. In the first chapter of the section, Lucia French utilizes the concept of scripted knowledge to demonstrate the close relationship between social and cognitive processes. She argues that the distinction between social and cognitive domains is particularly weak when it comes to scripted knowledge because scripts are cognitive representations of social behavior. As such, they contain information about both physical objects and about what individuals do with physical objects. She further argues that scripts, although individually constructed and "in the head," are socially shared and that because they are known by other people in the child's environment, they provide a common ground for adults and children to interact. She illustrates that children demonstrate rather sophisticated discourse skills when they are using scripted knowledge. The chapter by Mary Louise Kerwin and Jeanne Day pursues further the themes of the chapter by French while focusing on how children's social interactions with peers foster individual cognitive growth. They argue that current theories and research methods must be expanded before peer influences on cognitive development can be fully understood. In particular, they argue that both the interpersonal social interactions which lead to cognitive growth and the intraindividual learning processes involved in cognitive development need elaboration. Thus, Kerwin and Day, like

7 Vlll Preface French, argue that social and cognitive processes are tightly intertwined in developing individuals and that a complete understanding of development rests on adequately conceptualizing both. Thus, the three content sections of this volume-social judgments, senses of self and morality, and social influences on cognitive processes-provide a balanced representation of both traditional and current research issues in the study of social cognitive development. An overarching theme throughout this book is to consider developmental issues which seem to have direct implications for adult psychological functions. As such, we hope this book will stimulate innovative research that bridges the conceptual gaps between the adult and child literatures in social cognition. References Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (1980). Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Greenwald, A. (1981). Self and memory. In G. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 15). New York: Academic. Selman, R. (1980). The growth of interpersonal understanding. New York: Academic. Wegner, D., & Vallacher, R. (Eds.) (1980). The selfin social psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Wicklund, R., & Frey, D. (1980). Self-awareness theory: When the self makes a difference. In D. Wegner & R. Vallacher (Eds.), The selfin social psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Notre Dame, Indiana JOHN B. PRYOR JEANNE D. DAY

8 Contents Part I. Attribution and Social Judgment I. The Development of Attribution Processes 3 Saul M. Kassin and John B. Pryor Introduction 3 Children's Use of Environmental Cues 4 Abstract Principles 10 Content -Specific Knowledge 14 The Myth of the Adult Ideal 24 Conclusions Peer Perceptions, Aggression, and the Development of Peer Relations 35 Kenneth A. Dodge and Beverly A. Richard Introduction 35 Aggression and Peer Relations 35 Aggression and Social Cognition 43 Speculations on the Etiology of Cognitive Biases and Deficits 51 Summary Applications of Information Integration to Children's Social Cognitions 59 Colleen F. Surber Introduction 59 Moral Concepts 62 Achievement-Related Concepts 73 Other Potential Applications 84 Why a Formal Theory of Social Judgment? 87 Summary 88

9 x Contents Part II. Moral Development and a Sense of Self 4. Consistency Between Cognitions and Behavior: Cause and Consequence of Cognitive Moral Development 97 William S. Rholes and James W. Lane Introduction 97 Consistency as a Consequence of Moral Development 98 Inconsistency as a Cause of Moral Development 106 Concluding Comments Contextual Influences on Sociomoral Judgment and Action 115 Keith F. Widaman and Todd D. Little Introduction 115 The Measurement Context 121 A Contextual Model of Sociomoral Phenomena 129 Summary and Conclusions Integrative Themes in Social and Developmental Theories of Self 153 Daniel K. Lapsley and Stephen M. Quintana Introduction 153 Information Processing and the Self 155 Objective Self-Awareness 162 Self-Awareness, the Totalitarian Ego, and Selman's Structural Developmentalism 166 Summary and Conclusions 171 Part III. Social Influences on Cognitive Development 7. Real-W orid Knowledge as the Basis for Social and Cognitive Development 179 Lucia A. French Introduction 179 Scripts: Definition and General Characteristics 182 The Nature of Children's Scripts 184 Scripts as Facilitators of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Social Development 188 Conclusion 201 Summary 204

10 Contents Xl 8. Peer Influences on Cognitive Development 211 Mary Louise E. Kerwin and Jeanne D. Day Introduction 211 Student-Only Learning Programs 212 Theories of Peer Influences on Cognitive Development 214 Piaget 214 Vygotsky's Theory of Genesis of Higher Psychological Functions 218 Limitations to Accounts of Peer Influences on Cognitive Growth 221 Future Directions 223 Summary 225 Author Index 229 Subject Index 237

11 Contributors Jeanne D. Day, Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, U.S.A. Kenneth A. Dodge, Department of Psychology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, U.S.A. Lucia A. French, Department of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, U.S.A. Saul M. Kassin, Department of Psychology, Bronfman Science Center, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts 01267, U.S.A. Mary Louise E. Kerwin, Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, U.S.A. James W. Lane, Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, U.S.A. Daniel K. Lapsley, Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, U.S.A. Todd D. Little, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, California 92521, U.S.A. John B. Pryor, Department of Psychology, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois 61761, U.S.A. Stephen M. Quintana, Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, U.S.A. William S. Rholes, Department of Philosophy, Texas A & M University, College Station, Texas 77843, U.S.A.

12 xiv Contributors Beverly A. Richard, Dobbs Ferry, New York 10522, U.S.A. Colleen F. Surber, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, U.S.A. Keith F. Widaman, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, California 92521, U.S.A.