ON SOCIAL COGNITION1
FRITZ HEIDER
University of Kansas
T HIS talk will deal with social cognition and
with the way we perceive and think about
other people—about their attitudes, their in-
tentions, their emotions and actions, and about
their relations to us and to each other. And it will
deal mainly with one aspect of this thinking about
other people: namely, the way in which several
items of information combine and make up orderly
structures.
True enough—we also find structure and order,
implications and patterns in our thinking about the
nonsocial aspects of the world. But it would not
be unreasonable to suggest that the most com-
plexly interwoven cognitive patterns occur when
people try to give an account of social situations to
themselves or to others.
This, then, is what I want to discuss, order and
the relation of components to other components
and the relation of parts to an encompassing struc-
ture in our thinking about social events.
Of course, one can speak of order or structure
in two senses. One of these is concerned with the
way we group things into concepts, and how we
establish a hierarchy of superordinate and sub-
ordinate concepts. In the other sense, we con-
sider how components are linked together into a
more complex structure, as they are, for example,
in a syllogism or a story. To use an analogy: When
a house is being built, materials may be assembled
in advance on the site—bricks here, sand for
cement there, etc. The components are thus
grouped according to similarity. This grouping is
a low-level structure. It is like a classification ac-
cording to concepts: Things that belong to one
class are put together.
By the time the house is built, the order accord-
ing to classes has been completely broken up: Parts
that belong to the same class appear in many
1
This research was supported by Grant 05-224 from the
National Institute of Mental Health. I also want to
acknowledge the assistance of the Computation Center of
the University of Kansas which is supported in part by
the Public Health Service and the National Science Founda-
tion.
25
different places in the building. But this class dis-
order has made possible a different and much more
complex kind of structure. Instead of having one
relation, namely similarity of parts, determining
the order there is now a manifold of very different
relations which nevertheless link the different parts
to make a whole adapted to a particular use.
This example refers only to static structures and
does not take into account changes that occur
within structures. But similar differences can be
observed when we consider cases in which one
element causes a change in others.
Ashby (1960), in his book, Design for a Brain,
talks about "poorly joined" and "richly joined"
environments. A poorly joined environment is one
in which "most variables have an immediate effect
on only a few of the totality of variables [Ch. 16]."
Ashby is probably correct in stating that our
ordinary nonsocial environment is "poorly joined."
He gives the examples of dipping the pen into an
ink well or opening a door—acts which affect only
the variables that are directly concerned but which
have no influence on the chairs, the electric light,
the books on the shelves, and a host of other parts
of the environment.
On the other hand, a "richly joined" environ-
ment is one in which "every variable is joined
directly to every other variable so that what hap-
pens at each variable is conditioned . . . on the
values of all the other variables in the system." As
an example of a richly joined environment, Ashby
uses a set of simultaneous equations in which the
values of the unknowns depend on the whole set
and where changing any part of the set implies a
change in the solution. Logical syllogisms have
the same character: The conclusion depends on the
whole set of premises and not on single parts.
Now I would like to submit that in opposition
to the environment of solid, everyday things (and
here we would have to exclude some of the more
complicated things like radio receivers or com-
puters) our social environment consisting of other
persons with ourselves among them is usually a
 26 AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
system that is richly joined. In a group of people
the change of a single variable, e.g., one person
behaving in a certain way, may very well bring
about changes in every one of the other members
of the group, and, what is more, not the same
changes in each one. The kind of change that will
occur in each case will depend on many factors,
e.g., preexisting attitudes of the interacting per-
sons, the relations of these persons to third per-
sons, etc. Not only do we find that there are in-
fluences from every part to every other part, but
also that influences are specific to parts in such a
way that the whole may become very complex.
But, with all this complexity—and here is a
point of major importance for the problem of social
cognition—these wholes are easily grasped by any-
one who is familiar with the group. This means
that not only the systems of the objective social
world are often richly joined, but that the thought
systems that we use when we deal with them also
have that character. Let us say we have arrived
at a definite idea of a social situation, and this idea
may contain quite a few variables; for example, per-
sonality traits of the people involved, relations be-
tween them, mutual attitudes, etc., etc. In many
cases these factors are closely connected and a piece
of new information could easily affect a great
number of them. Also, these variables can usually
be expressed in sentences, and just as sentences
are combined in, a paragraph or a story, so these
variables are often the components of an encom-
passing structure. George Miller (1965) has said,
"The meaning of an utterance is not a linear sum
of the words that compose it [p. 18]." One can
go further and say, "The meaning of a paragraph
or story is not a linear function of the meanings of
its sentences."
To be sure, the way the meanings of the sen-
tences interact to produce the meaning of the
bigger whole is not any more a matter of language
forms, but of thought forms; and these thought
forms can sometimes be considered a kind of logic,
and at other times a psycho-logic, as Abelson and
Rosenberg (1958) have put it. Demonstrations of
these interfacings of causal connections in inter-
personal relations are given in many recent studies.
A good example is the monograph by E. E. Jones
(1964) on Ingratiation. Other illustrations are
found in studies of balance that show that some of
our responses to a social situation are determined
by interactions among several factors. In a typical
case, the pleasantness or unpleasantness of a situa-
tion depends on a set of three propositions. In
the p-o-x triad as Jordan (1953) used it, we were
dealing, for example, with the propositions: Person
P likes Person O. P likes Thing x. O likes x.
The pattern can be varied by making the com-
ponent sentences either positive or negative. What
is especially significant in this work on balance is
that it shows how often the total set of proposi-
tions rather than any single item is involved in
determining the preference for the triad, though
certainly single items also play a role in this kind
of cognition.
It is not hard to find further examples of triads
of sentences which are linked together in a way
that reminds us of syllogisms and which play a role
in our thinking about the behavior of other people.
For instance, you will agree that if a person can do
something, and he tries to do it, then he will suc-
ceed in doing it (Heider, 1958). If he can stand
on his head, and he tried to do it, he will do it.
This is a kind of conceptual truth—we do not have
to make an experiment to find out whether it is
really so. The relation between can, try, and
succeed is determined by the way in which these
concepts are defined, and when one states it in the
way I did just now, the relation is obvious. But we
should not overlook it and forget it because it is
obvious. Obvious relationships often appear in a
disguised, embedded form in which we do not recog-
nize them at first glance.
These are some examples of the patterns of so-
cial cognition that I am trying to describe. I want
to spend the rest of my time talking about two
different experiments that I am making at the
University of Kansas with the collaboration of
Grace Heider under a grant from the National In-
stitute of Mental Health. The first of these con-
cerns the cognitive structure of a story. We used
stories in this investigation because stories are
about people and in understanding and interpreting
them we employ a wide range of the schemata of
social cognition. In many ways a story is one of
the best examples of a richly joined structure. One
of the most complex cognitive achievements of
everyday life is the recall of the general features of
a play or a movie. It is an astounding feat if we
consider the intricacies of the stimulus pattern to
which we are exposed for 2 or 3 hours, with the
 ON SOCIAL COGNITION 27
Dotted Line Indicates Path of Movement

Jj
C -\

LT
u

cc/
201 /,,' 2f

FIG. 1. Outline of story in cartoon form.

continuous changes that take place in a profusion
of visual and auditory stimuli. Yet it is something
that all of us do, and with an amazing degree of
accuracy.
But to describe our experiment: We were led
to work on this problem of the cognitive organiza-
tion of longer meaningful passages by an experi-
ment that I made some years ago with Marianne
Simmel (Heider & Simmel, 1944). In this experi-
ment, subjects were shown a short moving picture
in which three geometrical figures moved about in
different ways and were asked to write a short
account of what they had seen. In most cases
they described the movements of the geometrical
figures in terms of actions of people or animals,
and they tied the parts of their stories together to
make units with meaningful sequences of events.
In other words, most of our subjects wrote stories
that we might call richly joined.
This moving picture has been used in a number
of experiments and has been a fruitful source of
suggestions for further study, but it has serious
limitations as an experimental tool, especially in its
lack of flexibility. It is technically difficult to vary
a single factor in a photographic sequence without
also introducing other changes, e.g., in lighting or
tempo. Therefore, we searched for other material
that would serve a similar purpose. In one such
attempt the original story of the motion picture
was presented in a series of stills—-the cartoons
which you see in Figure 1. (This experiment was
performed by Richard Lawless, graduate student
at Kansas University.) Subjects were well able
to follow the story in this still-frame form. Their
reports were similar in general structure to those
that we had obtained with the moving picture,
though they were less rich and less subtle on the
whole. This result seemed to indicate that, for our
purposes, it did not matter very much what medium
is used for the presentation, and in our next at-
tempt we tried a verbal form of the same plot.
This instrument consisted of 18 short sentences
(averaging S words each) as follows:
Jim is standing in front of his house.
Bob and Mary come along.
Jim approaches them.
Bob goes toward him.
Jim and Bob begin to quarrel.
 28 AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
Bob goes away.
Jim goes toward Mary.
Mary goes into the house.
Jim goes into the house.
Bob returns.
He looks through the door into the house.
Mary runs out and joins Bob.
Bob and Mary run away together.
Jim comes out of the house.
He looks around for Bob and Mary.
He cannot find them.
He is sad. (Or, with another experimental group: He is
glad.)
Jim goes back into the house.
Except for the word "sad" or "glad," the 18 state-
ments of the plot consist almost entirely of descrip-
tions of overt actions: stand, come along, approach,
etc. The principal independent variable was the
two words, "sad" and "glad," which referred to
Jim's feelings at the end when he was unable to
find the other two persons of the story.
The sex of the subjects was treated as a second
independent variable. There were 200 subjects 2 in
all, divided into four experimental groups accord-
ing to sex and the critical word of the plot.
The plot was presented as part of a mimeo-
graphed booklet containing instructions and allow-
ing space for information regarding a number of
dependent variables. In this report I shall discuss
only two: 7-point ratings of each character on three
dimensions that are heavily loaded on Osgood's
(Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957) evaluative
factors (good-bad, kind-cruel, and wise-foolish), and
ratings on a 3-point scale of Jim's attitude toward
the other two characters with points designated as
like, neutral, and dislike.
We may say that this procedure consisted of giv-
ing the subjects a sequence of 18 sentences, poorly
joined in the sense that each one could have been
replaced by a great variety of very different sen-
tences; there were no constraints that required the
presence of the actual sentences that were given.
The task of the subjects was, essentially, to produce
from this a richly joined unit by providing reasons
for the actions that occurred and by introducing
evaluative information regarding the characters.
On the whole, the subjects were well able to fol-
low the instructions and to produce an integrated
2
We are grateful to undergraduate students from Duke
University and from the University of North Carolina in
Chapel Hill, Greensboro, and Raleigh who acted as sub-
jects in this series of experiments.
whole in which many of the parts fitted specific
constraints, and into which only a limited number
of substitutions could have been introduced.
For the purpose of this report I will not attempt
a systematic review of the results as related to our
two independent variables, the sex of the subjects and
the word, "sad" or "glad." But I want to mention
a few of the integrating factors that showed them-
selves. There were some that had obvious relation
to something like a balance hypothesis: The char-
acters that were described in the plot as moving
together (Bob and Mary) were described as liking
each other, and were also rated as similar to each
other on our valuative dimensions. When Jim was
sad at being unable to find Bob and Mary, he was
seen as liking them more than when he was glad.
Of course the content of the story also depended
on the role suggested by the plot for the cast of
characters. In preliminary experiments where the
names of the characters did not so clearly suggest
a girl and two rivals for her affections, there were
a number of stories about a father and mother and
child, or a father or brother in relation to a girl and
boy friend. These, in brief survey, are some of the
relations that made for the fitting together or the
meanings of the sentences.
An especially interesting outcome of several dif-
ferent analyses of these ratings is the difference in
stability between, overall structure and single ele-
ments within the complex created by our subjects
from the elementary plot material. For example,
judgments of Jim varied from group to group—he
might be seen as better or worse than the other
two characters of the story, but in spite of that
they were treated in each group as a pair and Jim
as the outsider. This showed itself in correlations
between ratings: There were consistent negative
correlations between ratings of Jim and Bob and
positive correlations between ratings of Bob and
Mary.
In another approach to the problem of stability
of structure as compared with that of details, our
statistical collaborator, Juliet P. Shaffer of the
University of Kansas Psychology Department, used
an adaptation of the Euclidean distance measures
previously described by Cronbach and Gleser
(19S3), and by others, to deal with the structure
of the similarity relationships among the three
characters as they were rated by our subjects. The
sum of the ratings on the three evaluative scales
 ON SOCIAL COGNITION
was used, and the distances were computed in a
space formed by taking each subject's score for
each character as a value on an orthogonal dimen-
sion. The space has thus as many dimensions as
there are subjects. The distances measured in this
way showed the following order: Bob-Mary the
smallest; then Jim-Mary; and finally Jim-Bob the
largest distance. This ordering held for each of
our four experimental groups, men-women, glad-
sad, and continued in the same direction when
elevation and scatter differences were removed.
This seemed a convincing demonstration of the
relative constancy of structure as compared to the
variability of details in this material.
These results parallel what Bartlett found long
ago in his studies of Remembering in which single
subjects were asked to recall story material again
and again over a long period. Bartlett (1932) con-
cluded from his work that in spite of changes in
details that occurred with time "the form, plan,
type, or scheme of the story seems, in fact, for
the ordinary adult to be the most dominant and
persistent factor in this kind of material [p. 83]."
We had expected subjects to organize the informa-
tion that was given in terms of the characters of
our story, and in a sense that was what they did.
However, the core of the organization seems to have
been the larger configuration of the three charac-
ters taken together. Their individual traits were
the details that were filled in with considerable
variation, but in most cases in such a way as to con-
form to the whole structure.
I now want to describe a series of experiments,
that we carried out for the purpose of pinpointing
more of the assumptions that are included in this
network that underlies our social cognition. These
experiments, in one respect, are exactly opposite in
design to the one with the story. In that experi-
ment we used a single independent variable, the word
"sad" or "glad" that described Jim's feelings (or
two if we also count the sex of the subjects). In
this series we have used several independent varia-
bles and a single dependent variable—an evalua-
tive judgment made on a 7-point scale. (In each
case a rating of "1" refers to the favorable pole
of the scale, a rating of "7" to the unfavorable
pole.) Like some of the balance experiments, these
used sentences as elements, presenting them in com-
plexes of three or four. Each sentence is a proposi-
tion that can be phrased to convey either a posi-
tive or a negative meaning. (We omitted, at this
point, possible gradations between the two poles.)
The design of the experiment was such as to use a
full array of the possible combinations in each
series—thus with a manifold of 3 statements, each
of which could be either positive or negative, there
were 2 X 2 X 2 or 8 combinations. In other words,
each proposition could be treated as a two-level
factor in an analysis of variance design. The dif-
ference between these experiments and the usual
balance experiment is that the propositions were not
restricted to liking and unit relations, and that the
dependent variable could be changed from experi-
ment to experiment. We were interested both in
commonalities of responses and in locating indi-
vidual differences that might be related to other
factors.
In this particular series of four experiments we
were dealing with factors that cause an action or an
agent to be judged as good or bad when his action
was one that affected another person in some way.
In describing these experiments I will designate the
persons as A and B. The factors considered in-
cluded the power relationship between the persons,
A's liking for B, A's behavior toward B (he might
harm or benefit B), or the fact that A and B ap-
proach each other or withdraw from each other.
I will not attempt, in this brief report, to describe
the four-experiment design that we; used, but will
only say that each complex of three or four state-
ments used a different combination of letter desig-
nations for the persons and that the 40 complexes
were presented in a different randomized order to
each subject. The subject's task was to make a
good-bad judgment on a 7-point scale of a given
aspect of each complex. (For two series the evalu-
ation was of one of the persons, in the other two
of the act performed by person A in relation to
person B.)
The actual experimentation was carried out by
Sara Jane Spaulding, a University of Kansas stu-
dent. There were 100 subjects s in all, SO men and
SO women, but since we found rather few significant
sex differences I will give results for the group as a
whole, and because of limitations of time will take
up only two of the four experiments, Series I and
Series IV.
8
Undergraduate students of the University of Kansas
and Baker University.
30 AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
7 really a case of balance, though appearing here in
a somewhat unusual and unexpected guise.
6 Harm * * There is also a significant interaction between
the benefit-harm factor and the power factor.
5 When the agent has more power than the recipient,
o>
c
the effect of the difference between benefit and
14 harm on the judged value of the agent is much
greater than when he has less power. One might
Benefit consider the hypothesis that the greater his power,
Benefit the more the agent will be held responsible for his
action and the smaller his power, the more the
outcome of the action is seen as depending on other
_L I
factors.
o> e
5
OQ
o
I
Series IV used the triad:
Powerful
Main Effect Interactions A approaches B.
B knows that A likes B.
N = IOO **p«.01 B approaches A. How would you rate Person B?
SERIES I
FIG. 2. Main effect and interactions of Benefit-Power-Good
In this case, the first factor is A's act of ap-
experiment. proaching B or withdrawing from B. The second
factor tells us whether A likes or dislikes B, and
Series I consisted of three statements with the that B is aware of this. The third factor is B's re-
first arrangement as follows: action—he approaches A or withdraws from him.
Figure 3 shows the results of this series. There
A is more powerful than B. is again a strong main effect with B rated more
B is a good person.
A benefits B. How would you rate person A? favorably when he approaches than when he with-
draws. Approach as such has the connotation of
In other words, the first factor is the power rela- a friendly, positive act, in spite of the fact that it
tion between A and B: A is more powerful than B is sometimes connected with aggression.
or less powerful. Power was explained to the sub-
jects as having a broad meaning, referring to
status, money, or bodily strength, etc. The second 1 1 I I I I
factor is the value of B—good or bad—and the
third is A's action, benefiting B or harming B.
Figure 2 gives the results for this series, based
on mean ratings of Person A made by our 100 •<»* Reactor-^\
• ** ^^-« Withdraws \
subjects. We see that benefit versus harm showed ** N, _
a significant main effect, actually significant beyond
the .01 level. It is obvious that a person who
^Reactor ^ f -
benefits another will be judged more favorably than ^^— -• Approaches /
one who harms another. Neither the power rela-
tionship nor the goodness of the recipient as such
had a consistent influence on the evaluation of the 1 1 1 1 1 1
agent. However, there is a big interaction (again IS)
«
</)
* ^£ *
o'o fe a ° £ <£
far beyond the .01 level) between benefit versus °s
tj e
si,
<-»Jc o 1 .5^ ~% ~=
sa cc* s--s
harm and the goodness of the recipient. Our sub- cr<t !< Is z5 '.is
jects imply that it is better to benefit a good person Main Effect Interactions
N = 100
than a bad one, and worse to harm a good person
than a bad one. This is one of those cases of a SERIES H
combination of positive and negative relations, Fie. 3. Main effect and interactions of Approach-Like-
and a closer examination could show that it is Approach experiment.
 ON SOCIAL COGNITION
We also find highly significant interactions be-
tween the action of B and the two other factors.
Strongest is the interaction with like and dislike,
and we have to remember that it is not the attitude
of the person who is being rated that is involved.
He is judged according to whether he is approach-
ing or withdrawing from someone who likes or
dislikes him.
If one spells out the interaction, it says that a
person who approaches another who likes him is
rated more favorably than one who approaches
someone who dislikes him. The opposite is true for
withdrawal: The person who withdraws from some-
one who dislikes him is rated more favorably than
one who withdraws from a person who likes him.
It seems that in this case, the agent is approved
of if he acts in conformity with the other's at-
titude toward him, and disapproved of if he acts in
opposition, to it. The one signifies a sympathetic
action, the other an antagonistic one.
The second interaction, between the action of
the rated Person, B, and the previous action of Per-
son A can be explained in the same way. B's ap-
proach or withdrawal can be in harmony with or
in opposition to the approach or withdrawal of A.
When B responds to A's opening move in kind he
is rated more favorably than when he responds
antagonistically.
These two experiments deal with the problem of
person perception in a broad sense. That is, they
serve to demonstrate factors that are responsible
for our image of another person. And they make
clear that this image is often not a simple function
of a particular datum, but rather a function of the
interactions of a number of data.
I will conclude briefly: This talk has been con-
cerned with the interrelatedness of parts in struc-
tures of social cognition. If these structures are
richly joined, to use Ashby's term, then we may
say:
31
First—a change in one part should produce
changes in a number of other parts, and that was
tested in the story experiment with one inde-
pendent variable (sad-glad) and the many de-
pendent variables.
Second—a change in one part might be a func-
tion of a combination of changes in other parts.
That was tested in the experiments that were made
with three or four independent variables and a
single dependent variable. Both these kinds of
experiments show the relation between one part and
the other parts, but in one the changes in one part
are cause, in the other, effect.
In the end, the second kind of experiment may be
the more fruitful for the study of the tissue of
social cognition.
REFERENCES
ABELSON, R. P., & ROSENBERG, M. J. Symbolic psycho-
logic, a model of attitudinal cognition. Behavioral
Science, 1958, 3, 1-13.
ASHBY, W. R. Design for a brain. New York: Wiley,
1960.
BARTKETT, F. C. Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1932.
CRONBACH, L. J., & GLESER, G. C. Assessing similarity be-
tween profiles. Psychological Bulletin, 1953, SO, 456-
473.
HEIDEK, F. The psychology of interpersonal relations.
New York: Wiley, 1958.
HEIDER, F., & SIMMEL, M. An experimental study of ap-
parent behavior. Journal of Psychology, 1944, 57, 243-
259.
JONES, E. E. Ingratiation. New York: Appleton-Century-
Crofts, 1964.
JORDAN, N. Behavioral forces that are a function of at-
titudes and of cognitive organization. Human Relations,
1953, 6, 273-287.
MILLER, G. A. Some preliminaries to psycholinguistics.
American Psychologist, 1965, 20, 15-20.
OSGOOD, C. E., Suci, G. T., & TANNENBAUM, P. H. The
measure oj meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1957.