Social Cognition in Context: Motivational and Affective Influences 271likely to be subtle and hence escape detection; as a result,
no correctional remedy is pursued. Second, as a controlled
process, it is likely to require motivation and attentional
capacity for its successful execution. Third, if correctional
mechanisms are to result in a less biased judgment, the per-
ceiver must have a generally accurate lay theory about the
direction and extent of the bias. Otherwise, corrections could
go in the wrong direction, they could go insufficiently in the
right direction, or they could go too far in the right direction,
leading to overcorrection. Indeed, many examples of overcor-
rection have been documented (see Wegener & Petty, 1997,
for a review), indicating that even when a bias is detected
andcapacity and motivation are present, controlled processes
are not necessarily effective in accurately counteracting auto-
matic biases.
Wegner and Bargh (1998) categorize several ways in
which automatic and controlled mental processes interact
with one another. The examples we have just described fall
into the category of regulation—when a controlled process
overrides an automatic one. When an automatic process over-
rides a controlled one, as in the rebound effect, intrusionis
said to occur. Controlled processes can also launch automatic
processes that subserve the achievement of the actor’s mo-
mentary intentions, and this is termed delegation.For exam-
ple, delegation would be said to occur if a conscious goal to
go to the shopping mall triggered the many automatic aspects
of driving behavior. Conversely, automatic processes can
serve an orientingfunction in which they launch controlled
processes, as in Wegner’s model of mental control: When the
automatic monitoring process detects an unwanted thought, it
triggers the more effortful operating process to banish the
thought from conscious awareness. Finally, controlled
processes can be transformed into automatic processes via
automatization,as when perceivers become so skilled at sup-
pressing stereotypes that it happens automatically, and auto-
matic processes can be transformed into controlled processes
viadisruption,as when one starts thinking too much about
the steps involved in a well-learned task and subsequently
performs the task more poorly.
In many ways, the tension between automatic and con-
trolled processes has become the heart of social cognition
research. Most contemporary social cognition research pro-
grams are oriented toward this issue in a fundamental way.
One of the key insights to emerge from this research is that
our perceptions of and reactions to the social world are often
shaped by rapid, automatic processes over which we com-
monly exercise very little control. By virtue of their very au-
tomaticity, the impressions that are constructed on this basis
often have the phenomenological quality of being direct rep-
resentations of objective reality. We feel, for example, that
Mary is objectivelya kind and caring personrather than
recognize the role that our own biases (e.g., gender stereo-
types) may have played in shaping this necessarily subjective
interpretation. It may be possible to exercise control over
these processes. If we pause long enough to entertain the pos-
sibility that our perceptions of the world may contain system-
atic biases, we can engage in suitable corrective action. This
action, however, requires awareness, motivation, and atten-
tional capacity. Without them, we may function more like
automatons than like the rational agents we often fancy
ourselves to be.SOCIAL COGNITION IN CONTEXT:
MOTIVATIONAL AND AFFECTIVE INFLUENCESA common question asked of social cognition researchers is
How is social cognition different from “regular” cognition?
A common answer to this question is that whereas cognitive
psychologists often study cognitive processes in a manner
that is divorced from the real-life contexts in which these
mechanisms operate, social-cognition researchers muddy the
waters by attempting to add back some of the real-life context
into their experiments. In real life, our mental processes
occur within a complex framework of motivations and affec-
tive experiences. Whereas most cognitive psychology exper-
iments attempt to eliminate the role played by these factors,
social cognition researchers have had to increasingly recog-
nize that an understanding of how the social mind works
must include a consideration of how basic processes of per-
ception, memory, and inference are influenced by motivation
and emotion.
There have been a series of interesting debates in social
psychology that take the form of questioning whether a par-
ticular phenomenon can be explained in purely cognitive
terms, or whether one must invoke motivational processes in
order to account for it. One case in point is the tendency for
people to form negative stereotypes about minority groups.
This phenomenon has been studied for quite a long time, and
many explanations for it focus on the perceiver’s motivations
that are gratified by engaging in stereotyping of this sort. For
instance, maybe perceivers derive feelings of superior self-
worth by looking down on members of other groups (e.g.,
Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950) or
by viewing their own group as positively distinct from other
groups (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Alternatively, negative
stereotypes might arise in order to forestall feelings of guilt
about social inequality (Jost & Banaji, 1994). Could the ten-
dency to stereotype minority groups negatively ever be ex-
plained in purely cognitive terms, without appealing to these