ABSTRACT
The retrieval postulates outlined in chapter 2 come into play at many stages of processing and therefore play a role in our discussion throughout this volume. However, they have particular implications for the factors that influence the accessibility of concepts and knowledge in memory. The important role of knowledge accessibility in information processing is recognized in numerous areas of social psychology, including the comprehension of information in terms of semantic concepts (Higgins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977; Srull & Wyer, 1979, 1980), stereotyping (Bodenhausen & Macrae, 1998), consumer judgment (Adaval & Monroe, 2002), cultural influences on judgment (Briley & Wyer, 2002; Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martinez, 2000), and overt behavior (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996; Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998). Higgins (1996) provides an extensive review of this research, and a duplication of his efforts is unnecessary here. In this chapter, we restrict our attention to representative phenomena for which the proposed conceptualization has implications.
