COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY,SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE-TAKING,AND FUNCTIONAL PERSUASIVE SKILLS IN SECOND- TO NINTH-GRADE CHILDREN1

The assumption underlying this research is that effectiveness in communication involves social perception processes. Specifically, it was predicted that effectiveness in adapting persuasive messages to recipients would be related to the complexity of the interpersonal construct system (cognitive complexity) and to the ability to represent the perspectives of others (social perspective-taking). Fifty-eight children ranging from second through ninth grade engaged in tasks yielding scores on the three variables under consideration. Both predictions were confirmed: effectiveness in adapting persuasive communications correlated .53 with cognitive complexity and .64 with social perspective-taking.     

A Field Study of Social Information Processing Mean Differences and Variance Differences

Previous tests of the effects of socially transmitted information have not provided strong support for a social information processing approach to the formation of work related attitudes and perceptions. This study proposes that the attention-focusing effects of social information should be evidenced by unequal response variance and not necessarily in the typically hypothesized between-group mean differences of previous investigations. Three separate assessments of informational influence on work environment perceptions were conducted on a sample of state government emloyees who were relocating to an open office environment. Predictions of smaller within-group variances for employees receiving environment-salient information were partially supported in the hypotheses tested. Comparison of variance versus mean differences suggests that mean differences alone may not be sufficient for detecting social information processing effects on stimulus perception and evaluation.