Cognitive or Perceptual? Researchers, Such as Kahneman

¶ … cognitive or perceptual?

Researchers, such as Kahneman and Tversky, demonstrated that rationality was reducible to mental heuristics. Appraisals are cognitive in that they occur via cognitive heuristics that quickly size up a person based on the observers' past experience and socialization / enculturation as well as based on other heuristics such as availability and Appraisal, in short, works via mental heuristics that compel the person to choose that which he is decidedly comfortable and familiar with, rejecting that which is alien, hence threatening to him. Socialized in a certain way and living in certain times, the person interacts with familiarity, and generally chooses views that reinforce his beliefs rather than those that go counter to them. This sort of appraisal is called my-confirmation. A similar characteristic is that called naive realism where the person instinctively believes that he is right and the other wrong.

Distinction, however, should be made betweens stereotypes and prejudice both of which can be seen as appraisal. Stereotypes are said to initiate from cognitive schemas, which are derived from social conditioning and acculturation (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). They involve learned generalizations about 'typical' characteristics of members of the groups. Prejudice, on the other hand, is evaluative in origin and usually comes from intergroup conflict . The two, therefore, although similar in consequence are utterly distinct: one is cognitive in origin, whilst the other is evaluative (although 'prejudice' as attitude indiscernibly commingles generalizations with emotion).

b) Are appraisals cognitive or situational?

Appraisals, whilst being cognitive are also situational in that they hinge on context. Asch's seminal article on appraisal summed up that people seem to have the perplexing habit of forming a holistic impression of an individual even though the individual is composed of a sum of parts; that certain strong characteristics dominate; that observers correlate certain traits with relational attributes that may not necessarily appear in the person; that observers exceed the given picture and provide inferences that go beyond; and that perception hinges on context and that therefore impression of the same person may differ according to context.

Appraisal also depends on the socio-historical / political occurrences of the time. Financial distress may stimulate greater prejudice of the different other than may otherwise be the case in periods of economic security. Periods of national unrest, for instance, stimulate stricter anti-immigration laws prompted by a more restless society and appraisal of immigrants is, in return, harsher as it is of Islams (for instance -- as represented by Islamaphobia) during a time of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism. All of this is cognitive rather than situational

Appraisal in short depend on context in that sometimes mood, tenor of place, abrupt impression of person makes the impression more distorted than it would have otherwise been under different conditions. Impressions are also influenced by priority -- or primacy effects as for instance Anderson and Barrios (1951) showed . In short, components such as primacy effect, context, and previous impressions, as well as certain diagnostic criteria all culminate in forming instinctive appraisals and these are cognitive based on situational factors.

Are emotions too fast or too mindless for cognitive appraisals?

Emotions are both too fast and mindless for cognitive appraisal. Leading researcher such as Fiske maintain that appraisal often occurs without our knowledge and that even people who think that they are objective usually possess some implicit level of prejudice unknown to them.

Brekke and Wilson (1994) call this mental contamination where we decide and act impulsively informed by implicit and unconscious appraisals that may be incorrect.

Although the cognitive characteristic of these appraisals may well be evolutionary in origin in that they make order of our thoughts / perceptions and allow us to come to instinctive categorizations (the original intention being for survival), these instinctive categorical appraisal can sometimes serve to our detriment since we may form incorrect, biased, and distorted appraisal based on incomplete / distorted information and on bias.