Multiple Knowing Processes

Abstract

The last chapter ended with a new model of the social knower, able to function strategically as either naive scientist or cognitive miser. In this chapter, we present the multiple knowing processes evolved to enable the tactical flexibility to pursue diverse goals. We not only cover conscious explicit cognition but probe automatic, introspectively unknown implicit cognition. We also consider affect and ecologically based perception, contributions to knowing that lie not only outside consciousness, but also beyond cognition as traditionally construed. In the next chapter, we consider how multiple knowing processes produce and overcome stereotyping and prejudice. Along the way, we dust off another tradition, the psychoanalytic, and acknowledge its heritage as we return to the study of unconscious knowing processes, now with experimental methods. Throughout is shown the complementarity of the demands of social living and the design of the knowing system.