Society of self: The emergence of collective properties in selfstructure

Using cellular automata, the authors show how mutual influences among elements of self-relevant information give rise to dynamism, differentiation, and global evaluation in self-concept. The model assumes a press for integration that promotes internally generated dynamics and enables the self-structure to operate as a self-organizing dynamical system. When this press is set at high values, the self can resist inconsistent information and reestablish equilibrium after being perturbed by such information. A weak press for integration, on the other hand, impairs self-organization tendencies, making the system vulnerable to external information. Paradoxically, external information of a random nature may enhance the emergence of a stable self-structure in an initially disordered system. The simulation results suggest that important global properties of the self reflect the operation of integration processes that are generic in complex systems. When people think about or describe themselves, any number of specific thoughts, memories, fears, and feelings may come to mind. By themselves, however, the cognitive and affective elements that arise during self-reflection do not provide for a sense of self. Rather, a person has a self-concept to the extent that he or she has a relatively coherent structure within which the multitude of self-relevant thoughts and feelings achieve organization. In this sense, the self represents a society of autonomous, yet interdependent and interacting agents. Like a society of individuals, the self can be viewed as a complex dynamical system, with interactions among system elements promoting the emergence of macro-level properties that cannot be reduced to the properties of the elements in isolation. It is only at the level of such emergent properties that one can meaningfully characterize the structure as a whole. People can be said to have high or low self-esteem, for example, only because their thoughts and feelings about themselves are organized in a manner that indicates a relatively coherent evaluation, in much the same way that societies can be said to have norms only because the behaviors of individuals in a population are coordinated in a relatively coherent fashion. This reasoning does not mean that the self is not a unique cognitive structure or that the specific elements of self- by virtue of being the largest structure in the cognitive system, encompassing all personally relevant information derived throughout one's life (e.g., None of these defining aspects and processes of the self would be possible without at least some semblance of integration among self-relevant elements. Before one can verify one's self-concept or maintain a level of self-esteem, after all, one must have a relatively coherent perspective on the vast number of features relevant to self-understanding. It is critical, then, to appreciate the means by which specific cognitive and affective elements are integrated in service of coherent self-understanding. Processes of integration are not unique to the self-system. To the contrary, the issue of how distinct elements become coordinated to form a coherent structure constitutes one of the main challenges facing contemporary science (cf. 3

The importance of heritability in psychological research: The case of attitudes

It is argued that differences in response heritability may have important implications for the testing of general psychological theories, that is, responses that differ in heritability may function differently. For example, attitudes higher in heritability are shown to be responded to more quickly, to be more resistant to change, and to be more consequential in the attitude similarity attraction relationship. The substantive results are interpreted in terms of attitude strength and niche building. More generally, the implications of heritability for the generality and typicality of treatment effects are also discussed. Although psychologists clearly recognize the impact of genetics on behavior, their theories rarely reflect this knowledge. Most theories assume that behavior is relatively plastic and is shaped almost entirely by situational parameters. The possibility that a response may have a high heritability is often ignored. I argue here that ignoring this possibility is consequential. The vehicle used in this article is attitudes. This vehicle was chosen because it is a domain with which I have some familiarity; it is a domain that has a number of minitheories, and it is a domain in which the notion of heritability itself is suspect so that a demonstration of the effects of heritability should be particularly evocative. Background The notion that complex behavior may have genetic antecedents is not new. For example, Francis Gallon (1875) studied the heritability of genius in the nineteenth century. Although the idea that genetics influences behavior went through a period of controversy, particularly with respect to race and intelligence, it is currently enjoying a new, high level of acceptance (Plomin & Rende, 1991). For example, most social scientists now believe that intelligence test scores are significantly affected by genetic

ATTITUDE AND RELEVANCE FOR ACTION MEDIATED BY BELIEF COMPLEXITY AS DETERMINANTS OF ACTION

Abstract not availabl

Prior Knowledge Occupies Cognitive Capacity In Chess Problem Solving, Reading, And Thinking

Prior knowledge was varied in problem solving, thinking, and reading tasks in three experiments. The hypothesis was that the prior knowledge used in a cognitive task uses capacity in the same limited capacity active processing system that is used to process the ongoing task. In a reading experiment, prior knowledge about a target page was manipulated by controlling the preceding pages. In an experiment dealing with problem solving in the context of a chess game, prior knowledge was controlled by comparing experts with novices. In a third study subjects thought about personality descriptions of persons and groups, and about women's fashions and football plays; it was assumed that persons have more prior knowledge concerning the personality of persons than the personality of groups, that women have more prior knowledge about women's fashions, and that men have more prior knowledge about football. In all experiments, use of cognitive capacity in task performance was observed with a secondary task technique. The results of all three experiments were consistent with the hypothesis that prior knowledge uses capacity in the active processing system. The prior knowledge hypothesis is consistent with some aspects of current cognitive theory but not consistent with others. The results also suggest a fundamental and unexpected limit on the cognitive processing of experts