References 277with circadian fluctuations in mental energy. When “early
birds” were tested in the morning, they showed little evidence
of reliance on stereotypes, but later in the day they were much
more likely to render stereotypical judgments. Conversely,
“night owls” were highly likely to make stereotypical judg-
ments in the morning, but not in the afternoon or evening.
These findings suggest that low levels of circadian arousal
represent a risk factor for intergroup discrimination because
perceivers will lack the mental resources to marshal the effort
necessary for forming more individuated impressions. At the
other end of the spectrum, it is also the case that excessive
amounts of arousal can prompt greater reliance on stereo-
types, presumably by disrupting attentional processes (e.g.,
Kim & Baron, 1988).
One emerging trend in the literature on affect and social
cognition is the examination and comparison of the effects of
integral versus incidental sources of affect (e.g., Bodenhausen
et al., 2001). Most of the previous research has focused on
moods and other affective states that were triggered in con-
texts unrelated to the current information-processing situa-
tion. This incidental affect can be contrasted with feelings and
emotions that arise in reaction to the present situation itself.
This latter,integral affect,comes in two important varieties.
Chronic integral affectrefers to enduring feelings one has
about the individual(s), group(s), or setting present when an
interaction is transpiring, whereasepisodic integral affect
refers to momentary feelings triggered in a particular interac-
tion. For example, if one has a fear of dentists, a trip to the
dentist’s office will be imbued with chronic negative integral
affect; however, if this particular trip happens to go very well,
the episodic integral affect may end up being quite positive.
The affective dynamics of social behavior are very likely to
involve both of these kinds of integral affect, as well as the in-
cidental affective background of moods that are brought into
an interaction from previous unrelated events. Whereas a rich
set of theory and data has emerged to study the incidental side
of the picture, the role of integral affect in social cognition is
only beginning to be explored (e.g., Moreno & Bodenhausen,
2001; Perrott & Bodenhausen, 2002). In any case it is clear
that the affective and motivational context of social cognition
will continued to be explored with great vigor as researchers
attempt to reunite thinking and doing with feeling and
wanting.
CONCLUSION
There have been many debates about the appropriate defini-
tion ofsocial cognition—many reflect attempts to circum-
scribe the content domain or topics that fall within its purview.
In our view, social cognition is not so much a topic area as a
general perspective that can be applied to virtually any social
psychological topic in which one is interested. In keeping with
this perspective, we have reviewed the central conceptual
themes of social cognition research, including the form and
nature of mental representations, the automatic and effortful
use of such representations, and the ways in which these
processes are modulated by the motivational and affective
context within which they occur. Although we produced ex-
amples of the use of these general principles from a limited
number of topic areas (often focusing on stereotyping as a pro-
totypical example), they could be (and have been) applied in a
host of content domains, including group decision making,
interpersonal conflict, relationship development, social influ-
ence, political judgment, marketing and consumer behavior,
academic and athletic performance, and countless others. The
fruitfulness of these various applications shows that much ex-
planatory power can be gained when psychologists explore
the workings of the so-called black box, using objectively ob-
servable aspects of task performance to derive and test infer-
ences about how the mind goes about its business. Inevitably,
much of that business is social in nature. The business of
studying social cognition is to unravel the mysteries of our
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