The proposed research is concerned with the basic processes that underlie the use of information in forming impressions and making inferences. The work will continue to investigate issues we have begun to explore in the preceding period, including: (1) the factors that determine how information about people and events is encoded into memory and the effects of this encoding on subsequent judgments; (2) the cognitive organization of trait and behavioral information in memory; (3) the cognitive representation of event information, and (4) the role of affect and emotion in information processing. A multiplicity of procedures will be used, which range from judgment data to recall, recognition and reaction time data to assess the manner in which information is organized in memory and the ease of retrieving it for use in making judgments. The research to be conducted will generally bear directly or indirectly on implications of the theoretical formulation we have proposed. On the other hand, the research will be germane to several fundamental questions related to the encoding, organization and retrieval operations that are strongly emphasized in recent attempts to develop process models of social perception. In addition to the empirical work to be conducted, we plan to initiate work on a computer simulation of the theoretical model. This effort should help to uncover implicit assumptions underlying the model, and to suggest revisions of the model that have additional empirical implications.
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