Agenda 2000 ? Social judgment and attitudes: warmer, more social, and less conscious

Abstract

Developments in social judgment research during the last two decades have broadened the explanatory power of the information processing perspective by paying attention to the social context of human judgment, the importance of ‘warm' cognition, and the role of nonconscious processes. The application of social cognition theorizing to the formation of attitude judgments provided new insights into classic issues of attitude research, suggesting that attitudes may be fruitfully conceptualized as temporary constructions. Implications of these developments, open issues, and potentially fruitful avenues for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hash browns for breakfast, baked potatoes for dinner: Changes in food attitudes as a function of motivation and context

“…This finding is inline with research suggesting that attitude reports are contextually generated (e.g. Ferguson & Bargh, 2003;Schwarz, 2000;Wilson & Hodges, 1992)-food attitudes reported at any given time were influenced by the motivational and time context in which the reports were made.…”

Lay theories in affective forecasting: The progression of affect

“…Then lay theories of affect progression may either be activated or created spontaneously. The subtlety of the priming procedure also demonstrates the context dependency of affective forecasts, which is consistent with the general view that social judgments are a function of flexibly constructed representations of the object in question (e.g., Schwarz, 2000).…”

We Want the Same Thing: Projection in Judgments of Sexual Intent

“…Perhaps participants in such studies begin with the presumption that the targets are sexually appealing on some level. Although these findings situate judgments of sexual intent distinctly in the cognition-based projection framework, it is important to recognize that motivation ("hot cognition") and inference ("cold cognition") are not wholly separable forces (Sorrentino & Higgins, 1986;Tetlock & Levi, 1982) and that each may occur simultaneously or even perhaps be used in service of the other (see Schwarz, 2000). For example, attraction to a particular person may compel the perceiver to detect selfother similarities (vs. dissimilarities).…”