How Do Logical Inference Rules Help Construct Social Mental Models?

• Published in: Journal of experimental social psychology Vol. 33; no. 4; pp. 367 - 400
• Main Author: von Hecker, Ulrich
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: San Diego, CA Elsevier Inc 01.07.1997; Elsevier; Academic Press
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Logic; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Social interactions. Communication. Group processes; Social psychology; Social environment; Human; Mental representation; Social group; Social interaction; Cognition; Inference rule; Interpersonal relation
• ISSN: 0022-1031; 1096-0465
• DOI: 10.1006/jesp.1997.1325

Starting from recent approaches in mental model research, it is argued that (1) logical inference rules are used in order to construct mental cliques from learned sentiment relations, and (2) social context cues (operationalized as primes) play a crucial role in activating such rules. Transitivity and antitransitivity are taken as examples, and are shown as core constituents of such models. In a first experiment, priming was achieved by announcing the sorting of fictitious persons in eithertwoorthreecliques. Thirty-one subjects studied eight sets of sentiment relations among these persons that either did or did not satisfy their primed clique expectations. They showed longer study times and more requests for additional information in the case of inconsistent fits between prime and set. Their sorting solutions also showed clear priming effects. A second experiment (n=30) showed that when undergoing a recognition test after seeing the relation sets, subjects tended to confuse model-consistent distractors with information they had actually seen. In a third experiment (n=30) the results from Experiment 1 were replicated using more realistic learning materials.