ABSTRACT
All seemed tranquil in the garden of social cognition. In surveying contemporary research, it was clear that nearly every social psychological domain could be better understood by applying principles of categorization and schematic structure from cognitive psychology. The relevance of these principles was established for areas like person perception, stereotypes, attitudes, aggression, judgments, and attributions. Social categories and social schema dominated the cognitive explanations that were offered in comprehensive reviews of the field like those of Fiske and Taylor (1984), Markus and Zajonc (1985), and the Handbook of Social Cognition by Wyer and Srull (1984). With the publication of each new study, confidence grew that these principles provided the right nutrient for improved conceptual understanding within all areas of social behavior.
