ABSTRACT
Referring back to Chapter 1, in which we have emphasized that the construction of social reality comprises the input from the environment, prior knowledge, and the cognitive processes operating on them, we may recognize that all preceding chapters have been mainly concerned with cognitive processes and with the knowledge structures that support them. Although it was implicitly presupposed that input data are required to trigger these cognitive processes, the stimulus data themselves have not been under focus. This is the purpose of the present chapter. We now turn to intriguing research ®ndings that demonstrate how external data constrain the internal processes. Or, to use another phrase, we shall consider the intriguing interplay of environmental and cognitive factors that characterizes human interaction in particular situations and institutions.
