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Social Cognition 2.0: Toward Mechanistic Theorizing

Social cognition emerged in the 1970s and 80s as an attempt to answer social-psychological questions by adopting experimental techniques and theoretical concepts from cognitive psychology. Recently, cognitive psychologists began to build complementary bridges between cognitive and social psychology...

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Autores principales: Kim, Diana, Hommel, Bernhard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6895029/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31849763
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02643
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author Kim, Diana
Hommel, Bernhard
author_facet Kim, Diana
Hommel, Bernhard
author_sort Kim, Diana
collection PubMed
description Social cognition emerged in the 1970s and 80s as an attempt to answer social-psychological questions by adopting experimental techniques and theoretical concepts from cognitive psychology. Recently, cognitive psychologists began to build complementary bridges between cognitive and social psychology by showing increasing interest in the cognitive implications of social situations. Here, we take a closer look at the remaining obstacles to join cognitive and social perspectives on human behavior. Using conformity as an example, we attempt to demonstrate that the social-cognition approach has been successful in adopting cognitive concepts and experimental methods, but is still lagging behind with respect to (1) mechanistic theorizing, as it often engages in merely describing phenomena in terms of reasons rather than explaining it in terms of causes and (2) reflecting the sociohistorical context of the phenomenon under investigation. As we try to show, developing mechanistic theories for social phenomena, including the effects of individual differences and their sociohistorical dependencies, is not only possible but necessary to eliminate the boundaries between cognitive and social accounts of human behavior.
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spelling pubmed-68950292019-12-17 Social Cognition 2.0: Toward Mechanistic Theorizing Kim, Diana Hommel, Bernhard Front Psychol Psychology Social cognition emerged in the 1970s and 80s as an attempt to answer social-psychological questions by adopting experimental techniques and theoretical concepts from cognitive psychology. Recently, cognitive psychologists began to build complementary bridges between cognitive and social psychology by showing increasing interest in the cognitive implications of social situations. Here, we take a closer look at the remaining obstacles to join cognitive and social perspectives on human behavior. Using conformity as an example, we attempt to demonstrate that the social-cognition approach has been successful in adopting cognitive concepts and experimental methods, but is still lagging behind with respect to (1) mechanistic theorizing, as it often engages in merely describing phenomena in terms of reasons rather than explaining it in terms of causes and (2) reflecting the sociohistorical context of the phenomenon under investigation. As we try to show, developing mechanistic theories for social phenomena, including the effects of individual differences and their sociohistorical dependencies, is not only possible but necessary to eliminate the boundaries between cognitive and social accounts of human behavior. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-11-29 /pmc/articles/PMC6895029/ /pubmed/31849763 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02643 Text en Copyright © 2019 Kim and Hommel. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Kim, Diana
Hommel, Bernhard
Social Cognition 2.0: Toward Mechanistic Theorizing
title Social Cognition 2.0: Toward Mechanistic Theorizing
title_full Social Cognition 2.0: Toward Mechanistic Theorizing
title_fullStr Social Cognition 2.0: Toward Mechanistic Theorizing
title_full_unstemmed Social Cognition 2.0: Toward Mechanistic Theorizing
title_short Social Cognition 2.0: Toward Mechanistic Theorizing
title_sort social cognition 2.0: toward mechanistic theorizing
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6895029/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31849763
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02643
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