ABSTRACT
Any viable theory of social information processing must account for a wide variety of social judgment and behavioral phenomena, including those that occur both in and outside of the laboratory. Moreover, the determinants of these phenomena must be conceptualized in terms of their mediating effects on specific stages of cognitive functioning. To accomplish this, the model must state how different phases of information processing interface, and how they operate in combination to produce judgments and behavior. In addition, the model must be able to incorporate precise but also more circumscribed statements of the cognitive mechanisms that operate at each stage of processing (encoding, organization, storage, retrieval, inference, etc.). In doing so, the formulation must also provide for the fact that the cognitive processes involved in any given instance depend substantially on both the goals toward which these processes are directed and the type of information that is available for attaining these goals.
