ABSTRACT
Social psychology may be defined as the "scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and actions are affected by others" (Feldman, 1998, p. 4 ), where "others" may be "real or imagined, present or absent." Captured within the scope of this very general definition is an enormous and ever widening field of inquiry. Within the diversity of phenomena studied by social psychologists, however, one may discern two very broad domains of inquiry, the study of the influence of the situation or, more broadly, social context (and the explanatory/methodological framework that accompanies it, often called "situationism"), and the study of social cognition. The study of social context encompasses everything from the influence of social norms and imagined others on individuals' thoughts, feelings, and actions to what happens during face-to-face interaction. Social cognition is concerned with how people make sense of their social environments and, more specifically, how they perceive and make judgments about themselves and others (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).
