This comprehensive introduction to social cognition is the first to integrate successfully the distinct traditions that have grown up on different sides of the Atlantic over the past 20 years. It guides readers through the bewildering and sometimes contradictory array of theories, methodologies and applications, demonstrating how fruitfully the contrasting styles can cross-fertilize.The authors discuss work on attitudes, social schemas and attributions alongside that on social identity and social representations, while pointing out important linkages across these domains. Taking the best of the North American cognitivist and individualist social psychology, they integrate it with the broader framework of European research on identity and ideology. They also assess the more recent discursive and postmodern challenges to orthodox social cognition models.
This accessible and coherent overview of the social aspects of cognition will be essential reading for social psychology students.
