ATTITUDES AND SOCIAL COGNITION

APA CENTENNIALFEATURE

Thinking Is for Doing: Portraits of Social CognitionFrom Daguerreotype to Laserphoto

Susan T. FiskeUniversity of Massachusetts at Amherst

From the outset, perspectives on social cognition have taken an emphatically pragmatic stance, asevident in early writing by James, Allport, Bruner, Asch, Heider, Tagiuri, and Jones. After a hiatus,during which social cognition research neglected its proper attunement to social behavior, re-searchers again are emphasizing that thinking is for doing, that social understanding operates inthe service of social interaction. Early and recent (but not intermediate) theories have reflected apragmatic orientation in 3 recurring themes: People are good-enough social perceivers; peopleconstruct meaning through traits, stereotypes, and stories; and people's thinking strategies dependon their goals. The pragmatic viewpoint again opens up new areas for research and theory in socialcognition.

Is the study of social cognition a new-fangled invention or is ita time-honored venerable tradition? Since the first English-lan-guage works on person perception and social cognition, certainpersistent issues reveal a considerable continuity with the past.The modern high-tech enterprise frequently reproduces pastperspectives, although ironically often in ignorance of them.An elder could grumble that the young folks just don't payenough attention to their forerunners' toils, which are availablefor anyone's perusal and use. And there lies some truth. Theelder might add that, in the constant effort to make a place forthemselves, each generation pretends to new insights, even ifactually recycled; the (apparently) new is better.

Equally, however, one could argue for the benefits of suchtransgenerational forgetting, as new investigators recover theenthusiasm, perspective, and courage to tackle issues that be-came too encumbered by caveats, too dominated by certaintheories, personalities, or schools. Both the grumbling elderand the intellectual amnesiac will find some comfort here. Iargue that we should remember the "big-picture" concerns ofour founders, of whom I will offer some reminders, but avail-able space precludes a truly detailed history, so no one need losethe courage to address critical issues with a fresh eye.

This article was supported by National Institute of Mental HealthGrant 41801.1 thank all reviewers of earlier drafts of the article. Anyremaining errors or omissions are not their fault.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Su-san T. Fiske, Department of Psychology, Tobin Hall, University ofMassachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003.

The point, in short, is that one sees in the history of socialcognition and person perception research that pragmatismwas, is, and remains a core theme: Social thinking is for doing.During this centennial period for psychology, William Jameshas reminded us that, despite the world's riches, human reason-ing is highly selective in the service of action:

All objects are well-springs of properties, which are only little bylittle developed to our knowledge, and it is truly said that to knowone thing thoroughly is to know the whole universe . . . A [per-son] is such a complex fact. . . Whichever one of these aspects ofits being I temporarily class [a thing] under, makes me unjust tothe other aspects. But as I always am classing it under one aspect oranother, I am always unjust, always partial, always exclusive. Myexcuse is necessity—the necessity which my finite and practicalnature lays upon me. My thinking is first and last and always forthe sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time. (James,1890/1983, pp. 959-60)

Although his psychology lacked an explicit emphasis on rea-soning about social matters, James apparently believed in thepragmatics of social cognition and perception as well:

Each of these [perceiving] persons singles out the particular sideof the entire man which has a bearing on [that person's] concerns,and not till this side is distinctly and separately conceived can theproper practical conclusions for the reasoner be drawn; and whenthey are drawn the man's other attributes may be ignored. (James,1890/1983, p. 959)

Pioneers in the study of person perception subsequently de-veloped James's (1890/1983) pragmatic thesis that people selec-tively construct their understanding of each other for the sake

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1992, Vol. 63, No. 6, 877-889Copyright 1992 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/92/S3.OO

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of whatever it is they are doing. Then, for a while, researchersapparently had forgotten the pragmatics of social cognition inthe service of social behavior. More recently, and more to thepoint of this article, social cognition researchers currently arereturning to the pragmatic lessons of James and other forerun-ners. Today's high-tech, computer-assisted laserphoto resem-bles the daguerreotypes made by our intellectual ancestors,more than we often imagine. It is time to pull out the scrapbookand have a look.

I argue that, from James onward, early students of personperception knew the importance of thinking for doing. Peoplemake meaning and think about each other in the service ofinteraction; their interactions depend on their goals, which inturn depend on their immediate roles and the larger culture.People's interpersonal thinking is embedded in a practical con-text, which implies that it is best understood—and its accuracybest evaluated—by its observable and desired consequences forsocial behavior.

However, during an initial decade-long flurry of activity,many modern social cognition researchers focused on cogni-tion to the neglect of social behavior. As one indication, con-sider the first edition of Social Cognition (S. Fiske & Taylor,1984), which primarily reviewed work starting from the early1970s through 1982; it included no index entries for accuracy,culture, goals, meaning, or roles, and the one for motivationreferenced mainly older theories discussed as foils to currentwork. The book also included a chapter on behavior that wasobliged to borrow heavily from work on> attitudes and traits aspredicting behavior, both well-established areas, but neitherper se focused on person perception and social cognition. Sec-tions on behavioral confirmation (e.g., as reviewed by Snyder,1984) and impression management (e.g., Jones & Pittman, 1982;Schlenker, 1980) formed the exceptions to the general neglect ofsocially situated cognition for interaction. Consider also theHandbook of Social Cognition (Wyer & Srull, 1984); only 1 of17 chapters addresses one aspect of social behavior (Kraut &Higgins, 1984, on communication) and that chapter containsthe Handbook's sole references to meaning. Otherwise, behav-ior and roles are treated only as stimuli to be categorized andorganized in memory, and the index contains no mention ofaccuracy, culture, goals, or motivation. This neglect of socialinteraction occurs despite the urging of Ostrom's (1984) chapterclaiming that social cognition is "sovereign" in part because it isrooted in action. Finally, consider the germinal volume HumanInference (Nisbett & Ross, 1980), which focuses on normativelydenned accuracy but contains only two references each to be-havior and roles, with none to culture, goals, and meaning;motivation, as in S. Fiske and Taylor's (1984) book, is treated asa foil for cognitive explanations. Most writers were so intriguedby the rich potential yield from a purely cognitive analysis thatthey seemed to have temporarily forgotten what it served,namely, people interacting with other people (de la Haye, 1991).

Just a few years later, as one signpost, Social Cognition's Be-havior chapter was much expanded; the index now referencesaccuracy, culture, goals, meaning, motivation, and roles; andpragmatic thinking ("the motivated tactician") appearsthroughout (S. Fiske & Taylor, 1991). A concurrent review ofperson perception similarly emphasizes that social thinkingDerforms in the service of culturallv defined social interaction

(Leyens & Dardenne, in press). As another indicator, Ross andNisbett's new volume (1991), although a different book with adifferent purpose, still focuses on normatively defined accu-racy but also contains many references to culture, some to be-havior, and two each to goals, motivation, and roles.

The evidence everywhere indicates a comeback of the prag-matic consequences of social thinking for social doing. Themain body of this article argues that researchers are returningto this basic truth, as indicated by a renewed interest in threeprimary questions: accuracy, meaning making, and interactiongoals. This article discusses current work in these three areas,emphasizing recent theoretical advances that owe an explicit orimplicit debt to the pragmatic tradition. This article's emphasison theory complements a companion piece in the Annual Re-view of Psychology (S. Fiske, 1993), which examines the samethree major areas, also from a pragmatic perspective, but whichprimarily reviews empirical studies. The joint conclusion isthat social cognition researchers owe a lot to the field's fore-bears.1

Some Historical Context: People Perceive to Interact

The 1935 Handbook of Social Psychology, the first by thattitle (Murchison, 1935), includes comprehensive chapters onthe social lives of bacteria and plants. However, it contains nochapter even remotely addressing person perception and socialcognition. To be sure, Allport's (1935) chapter on attitudes in-cludes understanding other people through stereotypes andprejudice. In a view that anticipates modern social cognitiontheories, it describes attitudes as "rough and ready mental sets,through which diverse experiences are channelized. . . savingof time and mental effort. . . retained so long as it satisfies theindividual" (p. 814). Here one sees the thin thread of pragma-tism, though hardly in the strong Jamesian form.

The 1954 Handbook of Social Psychology (Lindzey, 1954)contains the first chapter on "The Perception of People"(Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954), and here one clearly sees pragmatism,with its attendant recognition of purposes dependent on rolesand culture, as determining impressions: "Culture and the de-mands of the situation are of critical importance" (p. 640). Im-pressions are informed by the purposes of a social context."The first step in reacting to another is forming an impression. . . Later reactions depend on this first step" (Bruner & Ta-giuri, 1954, p. 650). Bruner's subsequent work makes the link topragmatism more explicit; interpretation and construction oc-cur in a particular socially constructed context: "To understandpeople you must understand how their experiences and theiracts are shaped by their intentional states, and. . . the form ofthese intentional states is realized only through participation inthe symbolic systems of the culture" (Bruner, 1990a, p. 33, pro-nouns altered).

1 Because of space constraints and the scope of coexisting AnnualReview chapters, the chapter excludes potentially relevant work on at-tribution, intergroup relations, human inference, the self, and affect.Reluctantly, this article makes the same omissions. Also, to satisfy thejoint purposes of meeting space constraints and providing a contempo-rary snapshot, this article's review of current theories focuses almostexclusively on the last 3 vears.

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The pragmatic importance of the perceiver's and target's in-tents show up in Heider's (1958a) foundational writing as well.For example,

Adequate perception helps the perceiver to control the part of theenvironment that is perceived. In Lewin's terms, an unstructuredregion, that is, a region whose properties are not known to theperson, can be considered to be a barrier which makes actionimpossible. . . knowledge can help to bring about a relationshipof mastery and dependence. (Heider, 1958a, pp. 30-31)

Besides control in the service of action, Heider goes on to addtwo other pragmatic consequences of social perception, evalua-tion of the other and communion between people, both ofwhich emphasize the interpersonal.

At the same time, the first book in English concerning per-son perception took up the theme:

Much of one's life is spent in what appears to be fairly well coordi-nated interaction with other people. . . The relative smoothnessof operation in day-to-day living reflects the fact that one personis in some degree aware of what another person does, feels, wants,and is about to do. As Asch has said: "To act in the social fieldrequires a knowledge of social facts—of persons and group. Totake our place with others we must perceive each other's existenceand reach a measure of comprehension of one another's needs,emotions and thoughts." (Tagiuri, 1958a, p. ix)

Finally, the same book contains another pragmatic bridge tothe present:

Interpersonal perception can most fruitfully be treated as bothinstrumental to social interaction and conditioned by it. Thus thestrategic focus in social perception will vary as a function of thetype of social interaction it supports. If we can successfully iden-tify the goals for which an actor is striving in the interaction situa-tion, we can begin to say something about the cues to which [theactor] will attend, and the meaning [the actor] is most likely toassign them. (Jones & Thibaut, 1958, p. 152)

Jones today continues to argue for the pragmatic importance ofperceiver goals and purposes, "and yet it has not been easy todevelop a cumulative body of research showing just how ourgoals shape the cognitive processes associated with person per-ception" (Jones, 1990, p. 37). Jones and his students' work onattribution has almost single-handedly kept alive the concernwith a pragmatic, goal-oriented view of social perceivers, fromthe early 1960s through the early 1980s. Only recently haveothers recaptured this core concern, as indicated in the nextsections on accuracy, meaning making, and goals.

Accuracy: People Are Good-Enough Perceivers

If social cognition operates in the service of practical conse-quences, then people must be good-enough perceivers for every-day purposes. This humble and reasonable assumption flies inthe face of the lately dominant errors-and-biases approach,which essentially points out how stupid perceivers are, com-pared with scientifically defined standards (e.g., Gilovich, 1991;Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Ross & Nisbett, 1991).

A pragmatic perspective argues instead that people are nofools; they use workable strategies with adequate outcomes fortheir own purposes. The pragmatic perceiver does not necessar-ily maximize accuracy, efficiency, or adaptability; good-enoughunderstanding, given his or her own goals, is the rule. The prag-

matic perspective takes a relative approach to truth, predictingthat people will believe what can account for sensory experi-ence but what is also interesting, attractive, emotionally appeal-ing, and goal relevant (James, 1890/1983). Current researchershave picked up on the ideas that people believe what satisfacto-rily fits the data and what is goal relevant. If researchers areserious about the pragmatics of social cognition, someoneshould also scrutinize people's belief in what is emotionallyappealing2 as well as what is interesting and aesthetically attrac-tive; these are serious blind spots in current work.

Excellent Trait Accuracy

The first research on perceptions of people examined theaccuracy of recognizing other people's emotions and traits(Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954). Whereas emotion perception hassince spun off into its own domain, most person perceptionresearchers have concentrated on trait perception. Modern so-cial cognition writers are fond of saying that what differentiatesthe current from past research is an emphasis on process ratherthan outcome, but perhaps this emphasis is at least 4 decadesold: "The 'modern' trend focuses upon the processes of perceiv-ing and judging; the 'early' studies concentrated on the accu-racy of perception or judgment" (Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954, p.640). By the end of the 1950s, trait accuracy research ceasedaltogether, with Cronbach's (e.g., 1955,1958) landmark descrip-tion of several statistical kinds of inaccuracy, which previousresearch had confounded.

Meanwhile, the processes of perceiving and judging personal-ity were seen as pragmatically influenced by the quadrad of theperceiver's role, culture, internal state, and data (Bruner & Ta-giuri, 1954). Influential theoretical statements addressed eachof these, as reflected in the pivotal 1958 volume edited by Ta-giuri and Petrullo (for a participant's account, see Jones, 1990).Pragmatism was more typically a metatheoretical backgroundthan necessarily discussed, but its presence was evident. A prag-matic viewpoint above all emphasizes roles, which were amongthe more analyzed factors: Jones and Thibaut (1958) delineatedclasses of social interaction, defined by their goals, and theclasses' differential effects on attention and interpretation.Hastorf, Richardson, and Dornbusch (1958) urged studying cat-egories relevant to the perceiver's definition of the situation, forthe purposes of social behavior. Perceiver roles and purposesdepend of course on culture, which Asch (1958) addressed in ananalysis of linguistic metaphors (using physical descriptors torefer to functionally similar personality traits). And Hallowell(1958) described Ojibwa perception of human and nonhumanagency, using culturally defined schemas for complex (mobile,powerful, capricious, and causal) objects. The perceiver's inter-nal state was the focus of then emerging New Look thinking(e.g., Bruner, 1957) but also of work on liking and disliking asneed states (Horwitz, 1958) and work on motivated perception(Ittelson & Slack, 1958). This overall line of work was pragmaticonly in the Jamesian sense of people believing whatever is emo-

2 For exceptions dealing with self-perception, see Kunda, 1987, andSwann, 1990. There is almost no current research on motivated errorsin perception of others.

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tionally appealing; perhaps "psychologically functional"would describe it better. Finally, data were addressed by the rawdata of physiognomy (Secord, 1958) and the linguistic data oftrait terms (Asch, 1946; Bruner, Shapiro, & Tagiuri, 1958; Hays,1958). As James (1890/1983) noted, the pragmatic perceiverbelieves what accounts well enough for sensory evidence. Invariously addressing roles, culture, internal states, and rawdata, scholars acknowledged the relationship of perceiver to thebroader interpersonal situation and emphasized that the directpragmatic purpose of perception is social behavior (Tagiuri,1958a). The assumption was that accuracy according to someexternal standard was not interesting or sufficient; indeed bythat standard, "accurate" judges might be indeed less interper-sonally effective (Tagiuri, 1958b). Instead of accuracy, processesof person perception were important to understand how peo-ple form impressions adequate enough for interaction.

The pragmatic accuracy of person perception became a qui-escent issue during the ensuing two decades. Perhaps it wasimplicit in the debate over algebraic (piecemeal) versus gestalt(configural) models of person perception (for an overview andreferences, see S. Fiske & Taylor, 1991, chap. 4): The algebraicmodels were somehow more rational, predictable, and account-able, if not strictly accurate. But essentially, the pragmatic questfor perceiver accuracy was an abandoned enterprise.

The current revival of accuracy issues emerges from severalsimultaneous sources. Work on expectancies and schemas hasbacked off from an initially overenthusiastic message that peo-ple's theories uniformly dominate the data; instead, peoplestrike a workable balance (e.g., Higgins & Bargh, 1987; Jussim,1991). Work on the structure of the available physical data insocial perception also adds to an emphasis on social perceiversas adaptive, goal-oriented, and ultimately pragmatic (Zebro-witz, 1990). Another source of the resurgence of accuracy issuescomes from the explicit linkage of pragmatics and accuracy.Swann (1984) argued that social perceivers are accurate enoughwithin the circumscribed nature of their habitual interactions,partners, and goals; making the link to Jamesian pragmatics,Swann noted that perceivers operate well enough, given achance, within their natural social contexts.

Current work on accuracy goes back to the early concerns ofperson perception research, but armed with the methodologi-cal sophistication to answer the Cronbach critique. Kenny's So-cial Relations Model (Kenny & Albright, 1987) distinguishesseveral types of accuracy, stemming from a constant, the judge,the target, and the relationship. Using this model, Malloy andAlbright (1990), for instance, found that among well-acquainted individuals, perceptions are determined more bytarget characteristics than by perceiver constructions. Amongthe less acquainted, both liking judgments (Park & Flink,1989) and empathic accuracy (Ickes, Stinson, Bissonnette, &Garcia, 1990) are primarily determined by the dyadic relation-ship. Thus, consistent with the pragmatics of accuracy, somecombination of acquaintance and the specific relationshipseems important in determining impression accuracy. Accu-racy is viewed by many as being excellent, even if not perfect(Kenny & Albright, 1987). The pragmatic utility of good-enough accuracy is evident. However, the practical conse-quences of accuracy for social functioning are not well devel-

oped. For example, bias also can serve social functions (Leyens,1989).

Still in need of work is accuracy's explicit relationship tosocial roles and goals. Work on consensus addresses some re-lated issues, however. Accuracy is always relative to some stan-dard, which itself is a judgment by someone (Kruglanski,1989a, 1989b). Consensus with the target or consensus amongthe target's peers are common indexes of accuracy (Funder,1987), but consensus is not a necessary or sufficient conditionfor accuracy (Kenny, 1991). Acquaintance and behavioral con-sistency can facilitate consensus, but overlap in the behaviorsobserved and similarity in meaning systems are at least equallyimportant (Kenny, 1991). Like accuracy, consensus is also prag-matic: If people can rapidly agree on each other's dominanceand warmth, for example (Berry, 1990,1991), then their respec-tive interaction roles are relatively predictable. Similarly, if peo-ple have substantial consensus about each others' knowledge,then they can communicate more effectively (e.g., Fussell &Krauss, 1991; Krauss & Fussell, 1991). Thus, good-enough con-sensus facilitates interaction, as does adequate levels of accu-racy overall. This line of work awaits even more emphasis onthe pragmatic social context.

Adaptive Sensitivity to the Negative

People react acutely to negative information, as demon-strated by a variety of research over time, starting with theobservation of asymmetries between approach and avoidance,reward and punishment orientations, and algebraic weightingof judgments (for an earlier review, see Kanouse & Hanson,1972). The current theoretical task is to account for the phenom-enon, and all the theories make the distinctly pragmatic as-sumption that it is useful to attend to negative information.

A cornerstone of current theoretical efforts is the mobiliza-tion-minimization hypothesis proposed by Taylor (1991), whoargued that people initially mobilize in response to negativestimuli, responding physiologically, cognitively, emotionally,and socially. Subsequently, people minimize negative stimuli,dampening the impact at all levels. Taylor suggested severaltheoretical accounts: (a) an evolutionary advantage to short-term mobilization, engaging immediate assessment and cop-ing abilities; (b) an evolutionary and psychological advantage tolong-term minimization, resulting in positive illusions (Taylor,1989); (c) opponent process theory, which best accounts for auto-matic minimization responses to negative events; and (d)range-frequency explanations, which primarily focus on iden-tifying why mobilization typically occurs in response to nega-tive stimuli, namely, because they are often also unexpected.

Others raise more specific theoretical accounts. Skowronskiand Carlston (1989) suggested a natural object categorizationmodel, whereby negative information is perceived to be highlydiagnostic. For example, truly honest behavior can occur inboth moral and immoral people, but truly dishonest behaviorplaces a person squarely in the immoral category. The negativecue is more informative than the positive because it distin-guishes better between the two categories. The model explainsnegativity biases in impressions of social behaviors such as mo-

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rality and friendliness, and it predicts positivity biases in im-pressions of ability.

A related model of negativity effects builds on Reeder andBrewer's (1979) schematic model of social perception. Targetsare perceived to be integrated wholes or units in the Gestaltsense, engaging schematic expectations about how behaviorslink to dispositions (Coovert & Reeder, 1990). Depending onthe behavior domain, the positive or negative end may receivemore weight.

Moving beyond impression formation, Peeters and Cza-pinski (1990, Peeters, 1991) explain negativity effects pragmati-cally, in terms of a broader positive-negative asymmetry in eval-uations, designed for behavioral adaptivity. Although there is ageneralized positivity bias in approach behaviors (e.g., curiosityand exploration), it is offset by acute sensitivity to the negative,to accurately detect and avoid harmful interactions with theenvironment. All the current negativity theories are implicitlypragmatic, but this theoretical account is explicitly so, explain-ing how people navigate an environment with some beneficialand (according to the authors) many more detrimental out-comes.

Is attention to negativity indeed pragmatic? How do acuteinitial responses to negative information play out in social inter-action? The most mordant, paranoid people are hardly themost healthy or fun. We do not yet know enough about thesocial consequences of sensitivity to negative information.

Adaptive Sensitivity to the Unexpected

Ever since the pioneering studies of Asch (1946), person per-ception researchers have studied how people make sense ofcontradictory and expectancy-incongruent information. Iso-lated studies have cataloged various strategies for resolving in-consistency and incongruency by examining open-endedmodes of resolution (Asch & Zukier, 1984; Bruner et al., 1958;Erber & Fiske, 1984; Haire & Grunes, 1950) or by measuringsituational attributions that explain away inconsistencies(Crocker, Hannah, & Weber, 1983; Kulik, 1983). Both sets ofresearch suggest that perceivers are acutely sensitive to discrep-ancies and do not leave them unresolved for long, but socialcognition researchers lack an overall theoretical account of thestrategies used to resolve discrepancies.

Person memory research, originally growing out of concernfor such person perception processes, has only minimally fo-cused on exactly how people resolve incongruent or inconsis-tent information. The most comprehensive treatment (Srull &Wyer, 1989) describes two processes: linking incongruent ele-ments and other elements (thereby enhancing recall of the in-congruent) and bolstering the initial expectancy (thereby in-creasing recall of the congruent). However, the actual processesof linking and bolstering are still not well understood.

Instead, the consequences of incongruency for representa-tion in memory are better understood. The well-known incon-gruency advantage in memory may be limited to the narrowparadigm in which it was discovered and developed (see S.Fiske & Taylor, 1991, pp. 124-132 for a narrative review; seeStangor & McMillan, 1992, for a meta-analysis specifying con-ditions of its occurrence). Incongruency has an initial advan-

tage mainly when first encountered by accuracy-motivated per-ceivers with weak prior impressions. Information congruentwith strong expectations built up from experience has an ad-vantage when perceivers are less motivated to understand theincongruencies, and it tends to predominate at later stages, inretrieval and guessing strategies. This configuration of effectsseems pragmatic and adaptive, involving as it does an on-linealerting mechanism and a resolution that balances prior withcurrent information. It also parallels the mobilization-minimi-zation response to negative information.

As a pragmatic model would predict, memory varies dramati-cally with one's goals as well, improving accuracy from themost superficial goals (e.g., merely comprehending or memoriz-ing) to the most psychologically involving (e.g., empathy or self-reference; S. Fiske & Taylor, 1991, pp. 328-339). But researcherslack a comprehensive theory of which goals guide person mem-ory, why, and how they do so. From a pragmatic perspective, thiswould be crucial.

At first, memory might seem most useful when it is mostaccurate, but the pragmatics of memory are more complex thanthat. Superficially, the criteria for accuracy in person memorymight seem obvious; to the degree subjects remember the char-acteristics presented, then they are accurate. But scratch thesurface, and the proper definition of accuracy instantly revealsmore complexity. Should accuracy be determined by free recallor recognition? Should literal recall or approximate gist be thestandard? Should subjects have to extract the information froma complex stimulus array or be given prepackaged cues, andwhich is a better gauge of memory accuracy? Does the use oforganizing themes (expectancies, schemas, and stereotypes)imply actuarial accuracy based on accumulated experience, orare these faulty abstractions that gloss over important details ofthe concrete data? More attention to such issues would enrichthe field.

Summary

As William James (1890/1983) originally observed, peoplebelieve what accounts well enough for sensory data but whatalso fits their purposes. Scholars since James have extrapolatedthis argument to the excellent levels of consensus and accuracyin the service of interaction as well as to people's adaptive sensi-tivity to negative and incongruent information.

People Use Simple and Familiar Structuresto Make Meaning

James (1890/1983) described how selectivity helps people toreason: "First, an extracted character is taken as equivalent tothe entire datum from which it comes; and, Second, the charac-ter thus taken suggests a certain consequence more obviouslythan it was suggested by the total datum as it originally came"(p. 966). James goes on to describe the pragmatic utility of suchextracted characters based on their relative simplicity and ap-parent familiarity.

The importance of such meaning-making structures did notescape early writers specifically examining the perception ofpersonality. One can sense the frustration as Gordon Allport

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(1937) wrote about failures to attend to such meaning-makingstructures in research on "inference" (i.e., mosaic, piecemealassociations) as opposed to research on "intuition" (i.e., immedi-ate insight into configurations):

It would not have been necessary to discuss at such length the partthat intuition plays in the understanding of personality were it notfor the fact that the psychologist (of all people) tends to forgetabout i t . . . The process of understanding personality requiresboth intuition and inference . . . [Mosaic associative] processesare normally subservient to the structuring activity of the mind. . . We obtain what organization we can from the outer field andsupply the remainder from within." (Allport, 1937, pp. 547-548,italics omitted).

Intuition (meaning-making structure) plays an importantpragmatic role. The structures of the mind, the "extracted char-acters" of understanding, result from perceiver purposes, asJames would argue, and from social context, as Solomon Aschand Helen Block Lewis would argue. The latter two (Asch, 1940;Asch, Block, & Hertzman, 1938; Lewis, 1941) noted changes insocial judgment from changes in meaning, which result fromsalient social standards. Thus, meaning making is pragmati-cally attuned to the social context.

Heider (1958b) reinforced the idea of simple structures thatresult from perceiver purposes in a social context.

In contrast to things, persons are rarely mere manipulanda;rather, they are action centers, they can do something to us, theycan benefit or harm us intentionally, and we can benefit or harmthem. Persons are perceived as having abilities, as acting purpose-fully, as having wishes or sentiments, as perceiving or watching us.They are systems having representation, they can be our friends orenemies, and each has . . . characteristic traits. (Heider, 1958b,p. 22)

Thus, Heider explicitly links dispositional attribution and thepragmatics of social interaction. He subsequently noted that adispositional schema is a construct, a simple representation ofan otherwise confused sequence of behavior, which tells theperceiver what to expect and what to do: "Attribution serves theattainment of a stable and consistent environment, gives a par-simonious and at the same time often an adequate descriptionof what happens, and determines what we expect will occur andwhat we should do about it" (p. 25).

More broadly, prediction and control are the pivotal motiva-tions behind attribution (Heider, 1958c, Jones & Davis, 1965;Kelley, 1972; Kelly, 1955; for a review and discussion, see Pitt-man & Heller, 1987). This is nothing if not a pragmatic view ofperson perception. That is, social attribution facilitates feelingsof control within interpersonal interactions. Recent work onmeaning-making structures—traits, stereotypes, and stories—echoes these early themes of perceiver purpose and social con-text.

Inferring Traits in the Service of Interaction

Person perception research was established in many respectsby the study of traits as rich semantic concepts put together andused to form an internally consistent, unitary impression orgestalt (Asch, 1946; Asch & Zukier, 1984). Asch's interest in thistopic apparently stemmed from the utility of coherent, unifiedpersonality impressions for social interaction (Asch, 1952), al-

though the link was never strong empirically. Bruner (1957)argued that constructs (such as traits) are used to provide mean-ing when goals make those particular constructs relevant andtherefore accessible.

Following the cognitively process-oriented work of Asch(1946) and Bruner (1957) came two successful enterprises: (a)the assessment of the perceived covariances of traits to see theiroverall structural patterns in people's implicit personality the-ories (e.g., Rosenberg & Sedlak, 1972; Schneider, 1973; for arecent revival, see Leyens, 1991) and (b) a focus on predictingsimple evaluative impressions from the algebraic combinationof the traits' individual evaluations in isolation (Anderson,1981). From personality psychology comes (c) the contributionof the Big Five trait dimensions that recur across time, cultures,and types of judgment (for reviews, see Digman, 1990; John,1990; Wiggins & Pincus, 1992). However enlightening theyhave been, none of these approaches focuses on the complexand shifting meanings of traits interacting with other traits toform a unified impression of an individual for the purposes ofinteraction.

Ironically, this socially pragmatic theme is better representedin current work within personality psychology, some of whichexamines personality within a social-cognitive context. Mis-chel (1990) noted that traits and goals are both dispositions, butthat goals imply action toward a more specific outcome; theydescribe particular person-situation contingencies. Goals thusprovide coherence for a set of otherwise isolated actions. Peopleuse another person's goals for the purposes of remembering andunderstanding that person's own reasons for behavior. In con-trast, traits summarize and generalize from broad past patternsto future behaviors. People use traits for predicting behavior ingeneral and communicating overall patterns to third parties.This view of person perception is doubly pragmatic, then: Peo-ple use goals as important dispositional categories, and whetherthey emphasize goals per se or traits depends on their ownpurposes.

Other social-cognitive personality theorists take an evenmore explicitly pragmatic view. An emphasis on purposive be-havior focuses on "the creative, forward-looking thoughts aboutself, others, and tasks that individuals have, and on the ways inwhich those intentions are constructed and negotiated in abroad sociocultural context" (Cantor & Zirkel, 1990, p. 136), anessentially pragmatic viewpoint. Cantor and Kihlstrom (1989)suggested that the study of personality is focused on how peo-ple construe their social worlds then set and implement goals.Social intelligence constitutes people's adaptive repertoire rele-vant to life tasks; it includes social concepts, interpretive pro-cesses, self-knowledge, and goal management strategies. Assuch, social intelligence views social cognition and person per-ception as fitting into a larger framework of moving throughlife tasks, an inherently pragmatic perspective that inevitablyalso recognizes the importance of the person's social context.

Finally, a theoretical perspective from social psychology alsofocuses on goals (Trzebinski, 1989): In this view, another per-son is perceived as part of a story plot, with certain motivations,along with (a) dispositions that regulate how and whether thegoal will be obtained and (b) coactors who are instrumental tothose goals.

All these recent theoretical advances concerning traits and

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goals seem more than faithful to the pragmatic view of personperception in the service of acting and interacting. Yet theyhave not been well enough integrated with person perceptionresearch.

Stereotypes in Social Interaction

Recent models of stereotyping explicitly pick up some les-sons from the germinal and sometimes pragmatic work of Asch(1946) and Allport (1954). The person perception field wasfaced with a discrepancy between the psychological plausibilityof Asch-derived gestalt models of person perception, whichtake a holistic, categorical perspective, and the predictive per-formance of the algebraic models, which take an elemental,piecemeal perspective (for Allport's related discussion, see All-port, 1937, chap. 14; for reviews, see S. Fiske & Taylor, 1991,chaps. 1 and 4). Two current models synthesize these category-based versus individuated (elemental) impressions, relyingheavily on the perceiver's goals. Allport's influence is evident intheir emphasis on the useful priority of relatively automaticsocial categorization processes.

In the continuum model, S. Fiske and Neuberg (1990; also S.Fiske & Pavelchak, 1986) proposed that person perceptionranges between these two processes, with priority given to cate-gory-based processes in terms of speed, sequence, and confir-matory tendencies. Informational consistency (between attri-butes and initial category) plus motivation (i.e., goals of accu-racy vs. speed) determine the most likely type of process.Processes intermediate between the two extremes include sub-categorization, self-reference, and reliance on exemplars. Pro-gress along the continuum from category-based to intermediateto individuated impressions is determined by perceiver atten-tion and interpretation. Research on this model focuses pri-marily on conditions that promote category-based and indivi-duating processes; task interdependence in particular encour-ages individuating attention to the other.

Brewer (1988a) proposes a similar dual-process model thatfocuses on top-down, category-based versus bottom-up, per-son-based processes. Its basic premises are that most of thetime person perception resembles object perception in its reli-ance on categorization, but when it does not, it is determinedmore by the perceiver's goals than by the object of perception. Itdescribes four basic processes: Immediate, automatic identifi-cation within a multidimensional space may be followed by, ifthe target is relevant, typing according to pictoliteral proto-types (ie., specific, configural images). If the perceiver is suffi-ciently involved, a more detailed, personalized impression isformed according to individual schemas and prepositional net-works. And even without involvement, if the typing fails to fit,the perceiver will individuate according to subtypes or exem-plars. Although there are important differences between thesetwo models (Brewer, 1988b; S. Fiske, 1988), both integrate cate-gorical and individuated processes, depending heavily on per-ceiver goals.

A third model, the social judgeability approach (Leyens,Yzerbyt, & Schadron, in press; Schadron & Yzerbyt, 1991), ana-lyzes the "stop rules" implicit in the previous two models andtheir like. It examines when people feel they have permission tomake a judgment about another person. When people feel theyhave a socially acceptable quantity and quality of information

—even if they do not—they will make a judgment. This isessentially a pragmatic viewpoint, holding that judgments, in-cluding stereotypes, serve social functions. People use stereo-types to the extent they believe them to have explanatory value(Oakes& Turner, 1990).

Recent work, in summary, is turning away from the view ofstereotypes as a unique and pernicious phenomenon and situat-ing them in the context of goal-directed person perception in abroader social context. Nevertheless, we still need a good ac-count of the varieties of interaction goals, their origins, andtheir consequences for stereotyping.

Consistent with the reemerging pragmatic perspective, peo-ple's fundamental stereotypic categories suit the purposes ofsocial interaction among limited information processors, asAllport (1954) pointed out four decades ago (for a more detailedreview of the following, see S. Fiske, 1993). The most overarch-ing categories in social perception are based on cues immedi-ately present at the outset of almost any interaction (S. Fiske &Taylor, 1991, chap. 5), that is, the Top Three of age, race, andgender. But people clearly prefer subtypes (Allport, 1954; Tay-lor, 1981) and combinations of these categories for many inter-actions. Other physical, immediately available factors are im-portant too: attractiveness (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, &Longo, 1991) and facial maturity (Zebrowitz, 1990, pp. 73-74).A heavy reliance on physical cues and manageable categoriesenables social perceivers to identify and respond rapidly, whichsuits the need for speed.

However, any ongoing interaction entails purposes based ona particular relationship. For example, different generic typesof relationships have different rules and meet different needs(A. Fiske, 1991, 1992). The elementary forms apparently in-clude: authority ranking (e.g., boss-secretary), communal shar-ing (e.g., spouses), equality-matching (e.g., peers), and market-pricing (e.g., customer-storeowner). These different types ofrelationships promote naive category systems that shape mem-ory, physical actions, and language (A. Fiske, Haslam, & Fiske,1991). Moving from generic to unique relationships, significantothers act as categories that transfer to people who are similar(Andersen & Cole, 1990; S. Fiske, 1982). More theoretical workneeds to address such interpersonal bases for categorization,for surely the pragmatic perceiver's goals are shaped by particu-lar relationships.

Some aspects of more particularized processes of social cog-nition are well described in a recent theory that focuses onexemplars or concrete instances as a basis for memory (Smith,1990; Smith & Zarate, 1992). Rather than positing abstract rep-resentations as the primary basis for categorization, an exem-plar model posits a collection of individual instances based onpast experience. The perceived similarity of a target to storedexemplars, with or without awareness, determines categoriza-tion. Considering the multiple features that could classify anindividual, social and motivational factors determine attentionto the specific features that make up perceived similarity. Speedof accessing a particular type of exemplar then determines ste-reotyping (Zarate & Smith, 1990). Exemplar-based processingallows the social perceiver to have some pragmatic knowledgeof within-category variability and covariation of features (for areview, see S. Fiske & Taylor, 1991). It also describes both cate-gorical and individuated processes. However, it needs to show

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the pragmatic ramifications of exemplar-based processingmore clearly.

The extent to which people use category baserates versusindividuating case information became a focal concern over adecade ago (e.g., Locksley, Borgida, Brekke, & Hepburn, 1980;Nisbett, Zukier, & Lemley, 1981) and it continues to be of inter-est (for a review, see S. Fiske & Taylor, 1991), but a single theoreti-cal account is still lacking. People's pragmatic reliance on per-ceived diagnosticity indicates a social perceiver oriented to-ward good-enough understanding (e.g., Ford & Stangor, 1992;Hilton & von Hippel, 1990; Krueger, Rothbart, & Sriram,1989). People balance off the wisdom of accumulated experi-ence that results in categories they perceive to be diagnostic—in short, their expectancies—against the fresh data confrontingthem (e.g., Jussim, 1991). Again, the pragmatic interplay be-tween category-based and individuating sources of informationis evident but insufficiently developed from the perspective ofsocial interaction.

Stories for DoingA groundswell of recent research supports the importance of

narratives in making meaning. One theoretical source isBruner's (e.g., 1990a, 1990b) idea that human understanding isbased on the rules of narrative truth: narratives depend on se-quence within a coherent configuration, whether logically andscientifically "true" or not; narratives link the unexpected tothe known, using human intent as an explanation; and narra-tives reiterate cultural standards. In short, narratives explainpuzzling events according to human goals and actions, follow-ing cultural norms. Similarly, Zukier (1986) described how peo-ple's purposes determine their construction of meaning innarrative versus scientifically paradigmatic modes. Narrativeorientations are characterized by temporal sequences of humanintent and action within particular social contexts. Both Zukierand Bruner explicitly link this perspective to pragmatism.

Current social psychological research on narrative examinesdiverse forms: (a) Beliefs about how certain events unfold(stored causal knowledge structures or event prototypes) pro-vide typical explanations for recurring events (Lalljee, Lamb, &Abelson, in press), (b) Creating scenarios or imagining futureevents makes them seem more likely because then they seemmore plausible (Koehler, 1991). (c) Counterfactual simulationsdescribe what might have been; this perspective comes from thesimulation heuristic (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982) and its deriva-tive, norm theory (Kahneman & Miller, 1986). If it is easy retro-spectively to undo an event, then it is seen as abnormal andelicits stronger reactions (e.g, Kahneman & Varey, 1990; Miller,Turnbull, & McFarland, 1989). (d) Story models of decision-making describe how people construct complex representa-tions, incorporating the evidence, to reach and test judgments(e.g., Hastie & Pennington, 1991; for a review, see Galotti, 1989).(e) Mental simulation aids the search for meaning in negativelife events (Taylor & Schneider, 1989). More work on narrativesis likely soon, across social cognition research, and one hopes itwill focus on the role of stories in understanding and communi-cating within daily social interaction.

Thinking Is for Doing: Goals and ControlThis essay started with the most basic aspects of social per-

ception, namely, its accuracy and consensus, moving to mean-ing making with basic elements such as traits, stereotypes, and

stories. The essay and pragmatism both culminate in examin-ing perceiver goals and attempts at control: "This whole func-tion of conceiving, of fixing, and holding fast to meanings, hasno significance apart from the fact that the conceiver is a crea-ture with particular purposes and private ends" (James, 1890/1983, p. 456, italics omitted). As reviewed in the introduction,early person perception researchers kept in mind that percep-tion is for interaction. That point was lost on most social cogni-tion researchers for a while, as the main paradigms tended toignore social interaction (de la Haye, 1991). Recent work, how-ever, subscribes to the importance of goals. The social perceiveris no longer viewed simply as a cognitive miser hoarding scarcemental resources, but now as a motivated tactician who flexiblychooses among strategies to find one that is appropriate (S.Fiske & Taylor, 1991, chap. 1).

Speed Versus Accuracy Goals

A surprising array of roughly contemporaneous theories hasmore or less independently split perceiver goals into those thatencourage speed and expectancy confirmation versus thosethat encourage accuracy and complexity. This is clearly a dis-tinction whose time has arrived—again. Its precursors include"New Look" distinctions between perceptual vigilance and de-fense (Bruner, 1957), Festinger's (1964) distinction betweenpredecisional and postdecisional thinking, as well as Jones andGerard's (1967) "basic antinomy between openness to changeand the desire to preserve a preexisting view or conviction" (p.227, italics omitted).

One of the first to raise the issue this time around, Krug-lanski (e.g., 1989a, 1990) described epistemic motivations ascharacterized by closure (seeking or avoiding) and specificity(specific or nonspecific). So, for example, if one is motivated toseek a specific type of closure (i.e, a particular conclusion), thejudgment processes of hypothesis generation and validationwill continue until that goal is met, at which point judgmentwill be frozen and resist new information. On the other hand, ifone is motivated to avoid closure of any kind, then the judg-ment processes will remain unfrozen. The closure dimensionhas yielded the most research (S. Fiske, 1993), with an emphasison closure seeking as leading to epistemic freezing and bias andon closure avoidance as leading to unfreezing and greater accu-racy or complexity.

In the continuum model described earlier (S. Fiske & Neu-berg, 1990) and in an earlier review (S. Fiske & Taylor, 1991,chap. 5), person perception goals have also been split into thosethat tend to increase the costs of being wrong (accuracy-or-iented motives) and those that increase the costs of being inde-cisive (expectancy-confirming motives); this distinction obvi-ously parallels avoiding and seeking closure as well as accuracyversus speed. In the continuum model, goals in turn determineattention and information gathering as well as interpretation,thereby encouraging either more complex and generally accu-rate or more simple and generally less accurate impressions.This is nothing if not a pragmatic model, with its emphasis ongoals and good-enough understanding.

Turning to the development of stereotypes and prejudice,Stangor and Ford (in press) identified expectancy-confirmingversus accuracy-oriented processing orientations. Selective in-formation processing again is the mechanism for expectancy-

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confirming processes of stereotype development, and peoplepresumably have some control over which information they useor ignore. People are aware of the information value of behaviorand seek to understand others, unless otherwise motivated, forexample, by self-enhancement needs.

Examining interaction goals in person perception from aclear pragmatic perspective, Hilton and Darley (1991) similarlynoted the resurgence of interest in goals, arguing that the ne-glect of goals was leading to a wrong-headed view, as if peoplewere typically concerned with accurate global assessment ofothers. The authors distinguished between having an assess-ment set, in which perceivers try to think accurately about theother person along dimensions relevant to their own goals, andan action set, in which perceivers are concerned primarily withaccomplishing their goals, with other people mainly instru-mental to those goals. Sets and goals determine the informationsought, as in S. Fiske's (S. Fiske & Neuberg, 1990) and Krug-lanski's (1989a) views, but also the course of the interaction.

A distinction between deliberative and implementationalmindsets also split thinking processes into, respectively, thosethat are more open minded and information seeking versusthose that are more confirmatory and action oriented (e.g.,Gollwitzer, 1990). Essentially, before making a decision, peopletry to consider all the options, weighing their pros and cons.After making a decision, people are action oriented and cannotbe bothered with the complexities (both pro and con) of therationale behind a chosen alternative. Again the theme of prag-matic reasoning is clear.

Addressing the motivations that influence behavioral confir-mation or disconfirmation, Snyder (1992) identified some asemphasizing accuracy concerns and others as emphasizing sta-bility and predictability, depending on whether one is perceiveror target. For perceivers, the function of acquiring social knowl-edge (merely getting to know the other person) allows behav-ioral confirmation because it encourages a focus on making theother person seem predictable and stable. In contrast, the per-ceiver's functions of facilitating social interaction, expressingpersonal attributes, and defending a threatened identity all en-courage behavioral disconfirmation. For targets, on the otherhand, behavioral confirmation is allowed by the function offacilitating interaction (getting along with someone often en-tails going along with the person's beliefs, even about oneself).In contrast, behavioral disconfirmation is encouraged by tar-gets oriented to acquiring social knowledge, expressing per-sonal attributes, or defending threatened identities. In commonwith the other approaches just described, Snyder portrayed typ-ical perceivers as merely getting to know the target, seekingstable, predictable, expectancy confirmation as opposed to theexceptional situations in which perceivers may have overridingconcerns that promote disconfirmation. The pragmatic ele-ments seem clear here as well.

Moving to a developmental perspective, Ruble (in press; Ru-ble & Stangor, 1986) argued that an initial social-cognitivephase consists of information seeking, uneven concept usage,and interpretation in terms of relevance. A second stage re-duces information seeking and applies concepts in a more rigidmanner, making consistent interpretations (Stangor & Ford, inpress; Stangor & Ruble, 1989). These two phases resemble theother distinctions between more open (accuracy oriented) andclosed (speed oriented) mindsets or goals, but Ruble ordered

them developmentally and added a third, more advanced phaseneglected in the other models—that of low information seekingbut flexible concept usage and individual differences in inter-pretation.

Whereas each of these theories addresses different processesand issues, a striking convergence emerges on a pragmaticallyoriented speed-accuracy trade-off. The contrast between accu-racy-oriented (bottom-up, evidence driven) and decision-ori-ented (top-down, expectancy-confirming) processes is notunique to social perception models (e.g., in persuasion, seeChaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).What is needed now is a larger theory of the origins and predic-tors of the two generically different types of goals.

Automatic and Controlled Processes: Facilitating Goals

The pragmatic perceiver makes short work of routine judg-ments. Often-used constructs and often-repeated processes be-come automatic, and recent conceptual work nicely illuminatesthese processes. For example, Trope (1986) distinguished be-tween (a) spontaneous dispositional identification of another'sbehavior in a given situation and (b) deliberate inference (e.g.,subtracting off situational influences). Gilbert (1991) has takenthe two-stage theory into a general analysis of mental systems,first spontaneously believing in the validity of input, to under-stand it, only secondarily correcting or adjusting the initial be-lief; the second step, coming later and with more effort, is morevulnerable to disruption.

The most comprehensive theoretical analysis of automaticityper se is Bargh's (1989) distinction among varieties of automatic-ity on the basis of how many of the criteria for automaticity aremet (Bargh, 1984). A fully automatic process, preconscious auto-maticity requires being aware of neither the instigating stimulusnor the ensuing process, which of course one cannot then mon-itor or terminate. Examples could include subliminal primingeffects but, more commonly, the perceptual construction ofmeaning for a stimulus. The next level is postconscious automa-ticity, that is, one is aware of the stimulus, but not its effects, norcan one control the ensuing processes. Examples are priming(construct accessibility) effects, mood effects, and salience ef-fects. A process qualifies as spontaneous if it is goal dependentand has unintended effects (also see Uleman, 1989); one isaware of the stimulus, and different processes are instigateddepending on perceiver purposes, but they are subjectively ef-fortless, difficult to disrupt with a concurrent task, and onecannot monitor or terminate the process. A central example israpid dispositional inferences from behavior; perhaps covaria-tion detection is another. Rumination includes awareness of theinstigating stimulus and one's repetitive thoughts, but not neces-sarily of their connection, nor is one necessarily aware of howto terminate the process (Martin & Tesser, 1989). Thought sup-pression is singularly ineffective (e.g., Wegner, 1989) and hasdebilitating effects (Pennebaker, 1989). Finally, full-blown in-tent requires awareness of alternatives and focusing attention onthe chosen alternative, a viewpoint that explicitly builds onJames (S. Fiske, 1989).

These varieties of automaticity and control are generatingsome of the most interesting current research and thinking (fortwo collections, see Uleman & Bargh, 1989; Wegner & Penne-baker, in press; for reviews of the research see S. Fiske & Taylor,

886 SUSAN T. FISKE

1991, chap. 7 or S. Fiske, 1993). Pragmatic perceivers use rela-tively automatic or controlled processes as their purposes de-mand, although we do not know enough about which operateswhen and to what extent the motivated tactician activelychooses strategies.

Conclusion

Social cognition research is in its prime. It is not a kid any-more, in brash adolescent rebellion against its elders, out toconquer the world. Nor is it yet in decline or even midlife crisis.This is not a bad time to compare its new-fangled notions withthose of its forebears. The portraits in the daguerreotypesclearly resemble those laserphotos in the latest pages of thescrapbook. Yet the family resemblance is too often denied inthe service of making ideas forever new. This article urges in-stead that it is not necessary to be quite so historically blind:Current thinking in this domain continues to achieve provoca-tive and fundamental insights about human beings, and theresearch is cumulating nicely. Recent theories integrate andstimulate the research, meta-analyses of the literature indicatethat social perceivers are doing well-enough, thank you, as thepragmatic grandparents of the field would have predicted. So-cial perceivers are at least fairly accurate by some criteria, ex-tracting meaning in terms of traits, stereotypes, and stories,with their strategies depending on their purposes.

Reviewing the themes of current social cognition research,namely, that people are good-enough perceivers and that theyconstruct meaning relevant to their goals, one might wonder ifthere is an inherent contradiction here: How can perceivers beboth accurate (faithful to the evidence) and constructive? Theanswer lies in the balance that James so valued; people believeboth what accounts satisfactorily for the sensory evidence andwhat suits their purposes. The social context determines thepragmatic balance, but much more work is needed to specifyhow and when.

If the theme of pragmatism seems too convincing, one mightwonder whether there is any alternative. What else could per-ceivers be except pragmatically accurate? One answer is thatthey could be importantly wrong much of the time (e.g., Gilo-vich, 1991; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Ross & Nisbett, 1991), and thepragmatic viewpoint explicitly argues against this. Other alter-native viewpoints emerge from comparing closely related ideas:pragmatic, functional, and adaptivity perspectives all hold thatpeople do what is workable. This is neither the place nor theauthor to explore these issues in much depth, but it may behelpful to distinguish the three perspectives. Pragmatism holdsthat meaning, truth, and validity are determined by practicalconsequences, concrete goal-relevant actions. Human agency iscentral to this view, for actions are instigated by people's intent.Functionalism, in comparison, holds that psychological struc-ture is determined by the most frequent or normal use within apsychological system; it is agnostic about human agency. Biolog-ical or social adaptivity rejects human agency in that its mecha-nisms are the survival or proliferation of genes (or their socialequivalent). Thus, pragmatism takes the most emphatically so-cial psychological perspective, centering on human intent. Tothe extent that intent depends on one's roles, goals, and culture,pragmatism is inherently social.

For these reasons, then, pragmatic social cognition is intrin-sically social; it depends on perceiver purposes, and it empha-sizes human agency. In its traditions and in its current form,then, the pragmatic orientation of social cognition research andtheory places it squarely at the core of social psychology whereit belongs.

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Received July 2,1992Revision received July 27,1992

Accepted August 20,1992 •