1 - The Social Cognitive Perspective and the Study of Aging

Abstract

This chapter describes the social cognitive perspective and the study of aging. Since 1980, the study of social cognition and aging has witnessed considerable growth in both breadth and scope. The chapter focuses on identifying the advantages of adopting a social cognitive perspective in the study of aging and illustrates this through current work in the field. The basic goal of social cognition can reasonably be characterized as understanding how people make sense of themselves and events in everyday life. The cognitive process and social competence aspects of the social cognitive perspective are linked. On the one hand, the cognitive process underlying the acquisition and use of social knowledge directly influences socially competent behavior. An understanding of such processes can give one some insight into the manner in which social knowledge is organized and accessed in memory, along with factors that limit effective use of this knowledge. At the same time, social competence factors can be viewed as influencing the way in which cognitive processing proceeds. Perhaps the most important factor for understanding aging and social behavior, however, is the important role that the social cognitive perspective assigns to personal and situational factors that influence information processing. The chapter summarizes that the principles of social cognition have greatly affected social cognitive research in aging. However, aging research has also broadened the understanding of social cognitive process.