Social Cognition in Berlin: "XXIX International Congress of Psychology"

The "XXIX International Congress of Psychology", organized by "The German Federation of Psychologists´Associations", under the auspices of the "International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS)" was held in Berlin on July 20-25, 2008.

On Monday, 21 July, Don Spangler in "Computer measurement of motives", described the development and validation of a computer program to measure implicit motives. This program analyses namely speeches, written materials, interviews, transcripts of meetings, and articles appearing in the business press of USA.

Hugo Kehr gave an overview of his compensatory model of motivation and volition. Structural components of the model are implicit motives, explicit motives, and perceived abilities. Its functional processes are volitional regulation (compensating for inadequate motivation) and problem solving (compensating for inadequate perceived abilities).

In "Routines and decision making", Tilmann Betsch emphasizes that empirical evidence indicates that routines influence behavior generation, information search, appraisal, choice and the implementation of a chosen behavior in human decision makers.

Professor Gao presented a computer program which can divide the critical thinking procedure into several distinctive stages, and diagnose individual logic fallacy instantly.

In the "Social Cognition I" session, Julia Herfordt spoke about social facilitation. Professor Herfordt tested Zajonc´s social facilitation hypothesis with an antisaccade task.

Professors Shi and Wang argued that two different imputations in opposite directions may occur at the starting point of the empathy process and that whether the information of imputation comes from external or internal source will determine which one really happens: the results showed that the difference of information source affected the way how participants used the information to infer what other people would know and act.

To end this paper session, Professor López Alonso analyzed social representations from their inferential bases and structures as cognitive processes.

The paper session of "Social Psychology" was opened by an interesting contribution about the possible existence of structures isomorphic to feedback cycles in social psychological phenomena; Professor Caraiani analyzed classes of symmetries and synchronization of chaotic phenomena through the consideration of the correlation between cyclic invariants.

On Tuesday, 22 July, Professor Bertrams chaired a Symposium about "Self-regulatory strength and ego depletion". According to Professor Schmeichel, both cognitive load and ego depletion undermine self-control but they don´t operate via the same mechanism.

Professor Bertrams believes that success in self-control and complex thinking depends on a resource comparable to the strength of a muscle. This regulatory strength can be boosted by regular self-control effort. In the afternoon, Ulrich Wiesmann presented his structural modelling approach for the generalized health-related self-concept. Professor Wiesmann starts out from Markus´dynamic self-concept theory and finds support for a hierarchical factor structure.

On Wednesday, 23 July, a paper session about "Self-regulation" was chaired by Professors Sassenberg and Mamali. Jan Crusius analyzed the role of spontaneous social comparisons in automatic goal pursuit. Professor Crusius suggests that social comparison is a mechanism contributing to goal priming.

Waclaw Bak specified three dimensions of self-regulation. Based on conceptions of of Higgins, Markus, and Ogilvie, the self-system is defined as a cognitive structure, composed of different self beliefs (ideal-self, ought-self, undesired-selves, can-self, impossible-self) and discrepancies between them. Professor Bak hypothesizes that the self-system one can describe in terms of three dimensions: (a) negative-self standards; (b) positive self-standards and (c) can-self-standards.

The paper session "Social Cognition II", chaired by Carlos Pelta, was opened by Professor Kwong with an oral presentation on perceptions of progress towards goal. Following to Professor Kwong, perceived progress plays a critical role in people´s motivation to persist toward a goal. She has been demonstrated that while figure displays exert dominant influences over corresponding numerical displays, this effect is dependent on the relative fluency in processing the two different modes of information.

Professor Pelta presented "Implementation intentions and artificial agents" in collaboration with Professor González Marqués at the Complutense University of Madrid. The contents of this presentation have been exposed thoroughly in this blog.

Finally, in the paper session about the impact of goals and volitional processes on learning, Katrin Jorke presented Trait Procrastination as a failure in self-regulation that can have a negative impact on the efficiency of self-regulated learning.

During the Congress, an exhibition of posters allowed to obtain relevant information about the progress of Psychology in the world. Special thanks to the Organization Committee for their professional contribution in organizing this manifestation. I hope that the XXX Congress in Cape Town will be a success.