Adjusting Social Inferences in Familiar and Unfamiliar Domains: The Generality of Response to Situational Pragmatics
Titel:
Adjusting Social Inferences in Familiar and Unfamiliar Domains: The Generality of Response to Situational Pragmatics
Auteur:
Lien, James H. Liu Pham, B. Holyoak, Keith J.
Verschenen in:
International journal of psychology
Paginering:
Jaargang 32 (1997) nr. 2 pagina's 73-92
Jaar:
1997-04-01
Inhoud:
Two experiments investigated the influence of situational pragmatics on the selective use of specific instances and generalized knowledge structures to make social inferences. In Experiment 1, social inferences were made in an unfamiliar domain similar in structure to a typical situation of social greetings and address, but devoid of useful cues to social schemas. Participants were told that either one or another of the features of the situation was more pragmatically important for deriving inferences about appropriate social behaviour; consistent with predictions from a computational model of analogical mapping (ACME), they made reliable inferences based on analogies to specific instances, with the situational importance of relations guiding the selection of the optimal analogue. In Experiment 2, social inferences were examined in the more familiar domain of predicting social behavior between low and high status persons and between members of an ingroup and an outgroup in Japan. The availability of specific examples was varied, as was the perceived importance of status and group membership. The situation was isomorphic to that in the first experiment, except for the availability of generalized knowledge structures to guide inferences. Participants made relatively veridical inferences that were sensitive to variations in the pragmatic importance of dimensions. Provision of specific analogues had little impact on inferences, suggesting that participants were relying instead on more general and crossculturally applicable knowledge about adjusting social relations according to situational pragmatics. Dans les deux experiences conduites, on examine l'influence de la pragmatique situationnelle sur l'utilisation selective d'exemples specifiques et de structures de connaissance generalisees dans le processus des inferences sociales. Dans l'experience 1, les inferences sociales ont ete faites dans un contexte non familier ou la structure est similaire a celle de la situation typique de salutation et de conversation mais depourvue de tout signal indicatif de schemes sociaux. Les participants ont ete informes que l'une ou l'autre des caracteristiques de la situation etait particulierement important sur le plan pragmatique pour faire des inferences sur le comportement social approprie. Conformement aux previsions elaborees a partir d'un modele computationnel de correspondance analogique, les participants sont parvenus a des inferences fiables en faisant l'analogie a des exemples specifiques ou l'importance situationnelle des relations guidait le choix de l'analogue optimal. Dans l'experience 2, les inferences sociales ont ete examinees dans un contexte japonais plus familier dans lequel on peut prevoir le comportement social des participants selon leur statut social et selon qu'ils font partie d'un