This research seeks to demonstrate two propositions: (1)People differ both in how they understand or think about the world (cognition), and the factual information in the world which they pay attention to (perception). For example, expert teachers may differ from novice teachers both in the categories they use to interpret the same classroom observation (cognition) and in the kinds of classroom behaviors they pickup or are attuned to (perception). (2) It is then assumed that a major determinant of whether people are in a perceptual or cognitive mode (i.e. differ in the things they see as well as how they see the same thing) is the social setting in which their interpretations or observations take place. Consider the example of a teacher who is told to communicate a general verbal impression of a student. The demand to communicate under such conditions encourages the use of stereotype.like categories because it is easier to share these categories than it would be to describe a series of individualized perceptual reactions. Alternatively, if a teacher is told to develop a specific behavioral description of a student's problem behaviors, judgements are likely to be less stereotypic and more perceptually grounded. Other conditions which favor stereotypic impressions include being forced to make judgements about social interactive properties of people such as dominance, caring or cooperation, without the benefit of observing actual social interactions over time (i.e. from second hand verbal information). The research will attempt to show that the necessary information for judgements of traits such as dominance or competitiveness is directly observable in the amount or type of coordinations of actions that develop over time. For example, in a cooperative relationship actions become increasingly coordinated, while in dominance, one person's actions may come to increasingly direct the others. The emphasis in this research is on the multiple roles played by the social setting is in sharp counterpoint to most current cognitive work in social information processing which is overly verbal. Moreover, it is claimed that investigating the conditions which encourage a sensitivity to social stimulus factors may be useful to both evaluation and training purposes in regard to distinguishing between good and poor clinicians or expert versus novice teachers. Such research may also serve to help explain and thus reduce the widespread use of stereotypic views of the world.
