The applicant's major objective is to develop an integrative theory of the cognitive representations and processes that underlie social judgement and inference, person perception, and stereotyping. These topics relate to mental health in several ways. For example, stereotypes contribute to concrete social conditions (such as prejudice and discrimination) that affect many people's mental health, and negative stereotypes also affect people's reactions to the mentally ill. Three lines of theoretical and empirical work, involving a total of 18 studies, are proposed that will contribute to this general objective. Social- psychological laboratory studies will investigate exemplar effects on social categorization and judgment, clarifying the impact of representations of specific individuals as well as general knowledge about social groups. Laboratory research will also focus on the cognitive processes involved in social inference and judgment, including the way they change and increase in efficiency with use. Finally, new laboratory studies as well as computer simulations of existing data sets will be employed in the development of a new connectionist or neural-network model that will integrate both of these line of research. By demonstrating that a single process can theoretically account for several classes of phenomena that have previously been considered in isolation, this model should both inspire new empirical research and also generate new insights into person-perception and stereotyping processes that are important for mental health in society.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
2R01MH046840-04
Application #
2247275
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (SRCM (03))
Project Start
1991-09-01
Project End
1997-08-31
Budget Start
1994-09-01
Budget End
1995-08-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
1994
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Purdue University
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
072051394
City
West Lafayette
State
IN
Country
United States
Zip Code
47907
DeCoster, Jamie; Claypool, Heather M (2004) A meta-analysis of priming effects on impression formation supporting a general model of informational biases. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 8:2-27
Queller, Sarah; Smith, Eliot R (2002) Subtyping versus bookkeeping in stereotype learning and change: connectionist simulations and empirical findings. J Pers Soc Psychol 82:300-13
Mackie, D M; Devos, T; Smith, E R (2000) Intergroup emotions: explaining offensive action tendencies in an intergroup context. J Pers Soc Psychol 79:602-16
Smith, E R; Murphy, J; Coats, S (1999) Attachment to groups: theory and measurement. J Pers Soc Psychol 77:94-110
Semin, G R; Smith, E R (1999) Revisiting the past and back to the future: memory systems and the linguistic representation of social events. J Pers Soc Psychol 76:877-92
Mackie, D M; Smith, E R (1998) Intergroup relations: insights from a theoretically integrative approach. Psychol Rev 105:499-529
Stewart, T L; Doan, K A; Gingrich, B E et al. (1998) The actor as context for social judgments: effects of prior impressions and stereotypes. J Pers Soc Psychol 75:1132-54
Smith, E R; DeCoster, J (1998) Knowledge acquisition, accessibility, and use in person perception and stereotyping: simulation with a recurrent connectionist network. J Pers Soc Psychol 74:21-35
Smith, E R (1996) What do connectionism and social psychology offer each other? J Pers Soc Psychol 70:893-912
Smith, E R; Fazio, R H; Cejka, M A (1996) Accessible attitudes influence categorization of multiply categorizable objects. J Pers Soc Psychol 71:888-98

Showing the most recent 10 out of 11 publications