Focus on the Environment: Perception of Places and Persons

Abstract

The preceding chapter focused on theories of schema formation and use developed by cognitive psychologists. But these theories—and the research paradigms from which they have been derived—have increasingly come to be viewed by personality and social psychologists as useful tools for examining social knowledge as well. This chapter centers more explicitly on the implications that such theories have for the perception and cognitive organization of our physical and social surroundings. This discussion is divided into three sections. The first deals with schemas that are applied to the physical and behavioral environments within which social interaction takes place. The second focuses upon the perception of other persons. And the third takes up the organization and encoding of cognitive representations of event sequences.