ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with such personal experience variables as degree of familiarity and mode of acquisition of social knowledge. It considers the impact of degree of personal experience on personal information processing. The chapter examines the role of acquisition in social cognition. It provides preliminary attempt to overcome this limitation by delineating a number of factors that may play an important role in the acquisition of social categories and expectations. It provides a commentary on some of the emerging trends in social cognition, it is not our intent to offer a detailed and exhaustive review of the literature in these and related areas. Beliefs about particular people or social groups can be induced through knowledge of instances or directly acquired as a proposition. Behavioral instances can also be concentrated or dispersed across situations. Their inclusion in models of social cognition will not be straightforward.
