Social behavior is ordinarily treated as being under conscious (if not always thoughtful) control. Howmer, considerable evidence now supports the view that social behavior often operates in an implicit or unconscious fashion. The identifying feature of implicit cognition is that past experience influences judgment in a fashion not introspectively known by the actor. The present conclusion-that attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes have important implicit modes of operation-xtends both the construct validity and predictive usefulness of these major theoretical constructs of social psychology. Methodologically, this review calls for inmased use of indirect measures--which are imperative in studies of implicit cognition. The theorized ordinariness of implicit stereotyping is consistent with r ent findings of discrimination by people who explicitly disavow prejudice. The finding that implicit cognitive effects arc often reduced by focusing judges ' attention on their judg-ment task provides a basis for evaluating applications (such as affirmative action) aimed at reducing such unintended discrimination. Long before they became central to other areas of psycholog-ical theory, concepts of cognitive mediation dominated the anal-ysis of social behavior. The constructs on which this article fo-

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense. (Miller, 1993, p. 4) In 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks

Schwartz, 1998) to measure self-esteem by assessing automatic associations of self with positive or negatlve valence. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that two IAT measures defined a factor that was distinct from, but weakly correlated with, a factor defined by standard explicit (self-report) measures of self-esteem. Experiment 2 tested known-groups validity of two IAT gender self-concept measures. Compared with well-established explicit measures, the IAT measures revealed triple the difference in measured masculinity-femininity between men and women. Again, CFA revealed construct divergence between implicit and explicit measures. Experiment 3 assessed the self-esteem IAT's validity in predicting cognitive reactions to success and failure. High implicit self-esteem was associated in the predicted fashion with buffering against adverse effects of failure on two of four measures. This research developed from the assumption that distinct im-plicit and explicit self-esteem constructs require different measure-ment strategies. In particular, the research pursued implications of Greenwald and Banaji's (1995) definition of implicit self-esteem as "the introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) effect of the self-attitude on evaluation of self-associated and

ABSTRACT: The present article examines the nature and function of human agency within the conceptual model of triadic reciprocal causation. In analyzing the operation of human agency in this interactional causal structure, social cognitive theory accords a central role to cognitive, vicarious, self-reflective, and self-regulatory processes. The issues addressed concern the psychological mechanisms through which personal agency is exercised, the hierarchical structure of self-regulatory systems, eschewal of the dichotomous construal of self as agent and self as object, and the properties of a nondualistic but nonreductional conception of human agency. The relation of agent causality to the fundamental issues of freedom and determinism is also analyzed. The recent years have witnessed a resurgence of interest

An integrative framework, designed to organize the heterogeneous constructs related to "'control'; is based on 2 fundamental distinctions: (a) objective, subjective, and experiences of controt; and (b) agents, means, and ends of control. The framework is used to analyze more than 100 terms, such as sense of control, proxy control, and primary control. It is argued that although many terms reflect aspects of perceived control (both distinct and overlapping), some are more usefully considered aspects of objective control conditions (e.g., contingency), potential antecedents of perceived control (e.g., choice), potential consequences (e.g., secondary control), sources of motivation for control (e.g., mastery), or other sources of motivation (e.g., autonomy). Implications for theory, measure-ment, research, and intervention are explored. Control is important to psychological functioning. Decades of research in sociology and psychology have demonstrated that a sense of control is a robust predictor of physical and mental

Human cognition is often biased, from judgments of the time of impact of approaching objects all the way through to estimations of social outcomes in the future. We propose these effects and a host of others may all be understood from an evolutionary psychological perspective. In this article, we elaborate error management theory (EMT; Haselton & Buss, 2000). EMT predicts that if judgments are made under uncertainty, and the costs of false positive and false negative errors have been asymmetric over evolutionary history, selection should have favored a bias toward making the least costly error. This perspective integrates a diverse array of effects under a single explanatory umbrella, and it yields new content-specific predictions. Better safe than sorry. (folk wisdom) Nothing ventured, nothing gained. (contradictory folk wisdom) These two wisdoms seem contradictory. The first urges caution, whereas the second reminds us that we have nothing to lose and should throw caution to the

Two studies investigated the use of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998) to study age differences in implicit social cognitions. Study 1 collected IAT (implicit) and explicit (self-report) measures of age attitudes, age identity, and self-esteem from young, young-old, and old-old participants. Study 2 collected IAT and explicit measures of attitudes toward flowers versus insects from young and old participants. Results show that the IAT provided theoretically meaningful insights into age differences in social cognitions that the explicit measures did not, supporting the value of the IAT in aging research. Results also illustrate that age-related slowing must be considered in analysis and interpretation of IAT measures. In their review of the research on attitudes, stereotypes, and self-esteem, Greenwald and Banaji (1995) presented persuasive evidence that these social cognitions often operate implicitly (i.e., unconsciously or automatically) to affect judgments and behaviors. Age stereotypes and attitudes are no exception (Levy, 1996; Levy, Hausdorff, Hencke, & Wei, 2000; Perdue & Gurtman, 1990). However, the ways in which implicit age attitudes and stereotypes

Although commentators periodically declare that Freud is dead, his repeated burials lie on shaky grounds. Critics typically attack an archaic version of psychodynamic theory that most clinicians similarly consider obsolete. Central to contemporary psychodynamic theory is a series of propositions about (a) unconscious cognitive, affective, and motivational processes; (b) ambivalence and the tendency for affective and motivational dynamics to operate in parallel and produce compromise solutions; (c) the origins of many personality and social dispositions in childhood; (d) mental representations of the self, others, and relationships; and (e) developmental dynamics. An enormous body of research in cognitive, social, developmental, and personality psychology now supports many of these propositions. Freud's scientific legacy has implications for a wide range of domains in psychology, such as integration of affective and motivational constraints into connectionist models in cognitive science. Freud, like Elvis, has been dead for a number of years but continues to be cited with some regularity. Although the majority of clinicians report that they rely to some degree upon psychodynamic 1 principles

This paper provides convincing new evidence on the role of social resource patterns in shaping an individual’s chances of entry to the labour market. It links movements out of unemployment into employment to constructed indicators of ‘social cohesion’. These are social participation, social support and the social network. It was found that the current duration in a state has an influence on the probability of exit from that state. However, even after controlling for this and many other demographic and economic factors, the social network measure remained a significance influence on whether the unemployed found a job. Respondents who have close employed friends are significantly more likely than those who do not to exit unemployment. Why is this the case? Previous research has shown that the more socially integrated individuals have greater access to useful job information flows. In addition, this study has found that the unemployed who have close employed friends are significantly less likely to suffer psychological distress. In this sense, policies which isolate the unemployed into ghettos (for example, council housing schemes)

Many firms are moving to make virtual interfaces their primary, or even sole, points of customer contact. In this environment, some traditional service quality dimensions that determine customer satisfaction, such as the physical appearance of facilities, employees, and equipment, and employees ’ responsiveness and empathy are unobservable. In contrast, trust may play a central role here in enhancing customer satisfaction. We model trust as an endogenously formed entity that ultimately impacts customer satisfaction, and we elucidate the linkages between trust and other factors related to the performance of the online service provider and to the service environment. The model is validated using two samples—one comprising 225 online investors of a large online broker, and the other comprising 203 members of the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII). The findings suggest that perceived trustworthiness of an online broker is a significant antecedent to investors ’ satisfaction, and that perceived environmental security and perceived operational competence impact the formation of trust. The results have important managerial implications.