Search

(1962). Psychosocial Factors in Differential Social Mobility. The Journal of Social Psychology: Vol. 58, No. 1, pp. 183-200.

Using behavioral stimuli, a method for studying social concept attainment was developed which required S to articulate differences within dimensions as well as differentiate between dimensions. While no over-all performance differences on this task were found as a function of cognitive complexity, the high-complexity judges tended to identify non-exemplars more accurately than low-complexity judges. No relation between performance on the physical concept attainment task and performance on the social concept attainment task was found.

While recent research aimed at a more comprehensive analysis of the judgment process has encompassed many areas of inquiry (Bieri, Atkins, Briar, Leaman, Miller, & Tripodi, 1966), one major aspect of this research has centered on "anchoring" effects in judgment. Anchors, as such, have been conceptualized both in terms of the own attitude of the judge operating as an internal anchor (Manis, 1961; Sherif & Hovland, 1961), as well as in terms of context anchors (Campbell, Hunt, & Lewis, 19S7; Helson, 1947, 19S9; Segall, 1959) which provide the background for the judgment of midrange or ambiguous stimuli. In their writings, Sherif and Hovland (1961) and Sherif, Sherif, and Nebergall (196S) have stressed the importance of the judge's own attitude as an internal anchor in the judgment of social stimuli in that their assimilation and contrast model is dependent on the distance lying be

The concept of cognitive complexity stands at the junction of two converging streams of theoretical activity in contemporary personality theory. One of these streams is the concern with cognitive structural variables in behavior, emerging from such varied sources as the work of Bartlett, Piaget, Lewin, and Tolman, among others. In more recent years this stream has been fed by the productive headwaters of psychoanalytic ego psychology, as in the work of Klein and his colleagues, and by the developmentally based research of Witkin. An underlying assumption of much of this work has been that the person’s encounters with the world about him are mediated by the operation of cognitive structures which have been variously labelled as schema, controls, or styles. The invocation of such cognitive mediational constructs has not been restricted to the theoretical sources mentioned above, but rather has ranged over the entire conceptual spectrum from more purely cognitive theories (Kelly, 1955) to more basically associational approaches (Mandler, 1962).

“A theoretical approach which conceives predictive behavior to be a function of one's perceptions of others is presented as a means of unifying certain empirical data ordinarily subsumed under the labels of social perception, empathy, or social sensitivity…. all these forms of behavior rest operatio

The question was raised as to whether cognitive complexity (CC) would vary as a function of the stimulus objects being judged. REP Test protocols of 126 Ss were analyzed in terms of two clusters of role models that differed in regard to their social distance from the judge. A significant difference in CC was found; socially distant people were differentiated more complexly than socially close people. The results were interpreted within the context of a “vigilance” hypothesis wherein complex differentiation serves an adaptive function in terms of anticipating the behavior of more remote and possibly more threatening persons.

Discriminability of stimuli was reduced when the range being judged contained less salient end anchors. These effects were observed in both physical and social stimulus domains. Lowest discriminability occurred when no salient end stimuli were present. Social stimuli in all conditions were discriminated less well than physical stimuli.