Motivated Social Perception

Book excerpt: This volume highlights state-of-the-art research on motivated social perception by the leaders in the field. Recently a number of researchers developed influential accounts of how motivation affects social perception. Unfortunately, this work was developed without extensive contact between the researchers, and therefore evolved into two distinct traditions. The first tradition shows that the motivation to maintain a positive self-concept and to define oneself in the social world can dramatically affect people's social perception. The second one shows that people's goals have a dramatic effect on how they see themselves and others. Motivated Social Perception shows how these two approaches often overlap and provides insights into how these two perspectives are integrated. Motivated Social Perception contains chapters on: *the effect of motivation on the activation and application of stereotypes; *self-affirmation in the evaluations of the self and others; *implicit and explicit aspects of self-esteem; *self-esteem contingencies and relational aspects of the self; *an investigation of the roots and functions of basic goals; and *extensions of self-regulatory theory. This book is intended for scholars, researchers, and advanced students interested in social perception and social cognition.