Persistent Social Events Cognitive Preliminary Study

Research in social cognition of continual issues not only enriches the research of social cognition, but also has much importance in social practice. The Western Development is a significant strategy to develop western China. It can be regarded as an important continual public matter. Research of Western Development, as a means to study the cognition of continual public matter, is a good sample and is of great practical values to implement Western Development.With regard to seldom research in cognition of continual public matter and in social psychology of Western Development, this study can be thought a good trial.According to literature reviews, there are many studies on the metaphor, information processing and influencing factors of social cognition, on the relationship between social cognition and emotions, between social cognition and behavior. There is, however, in the field of social cognition relatively less studies on public matter, and much less studies on cognition of continual public matter. Based on the reviews of research in social cognition, continual public issues is defined as a sum of many mattes which are taken parted in by people under one topic, lasting a long time, happening in some place and during some period. According to the characteristics of continual public issues, this study takes the means of typical matter. Based on 3 principles of state strategy focus, common issues in western China, and issues that the public is most concerned of, 9 typical matters were choose as study material. According to the existing theories, continual social issues consist of S factors, attention, hope, evaluation, expectancy, and attribution. By the means of questionnaire study with self developed material, this study systematically investigates cognitive structure of continual social issues, the relationship between cognition and emotions, and between cognition and behavior, the effects of individual's characteristics of age, gender, occupation, educational background on social cognition of continual issues.The hypothesis of the cognitive structure was tested by the way of confirmatory factor analysis. The results show the concordance of the hypothesis and the data. Thecognitive structure of continual social issues consists of 5 factors, each 2 factors of which have direct or indirect relationship. Attention has direct effect on hope, expectancy, and evaluation; hope has direct effect on evaluation and expectancy; evaluation has direct effect on expectancy and attribution; attribution has direct effect on hope and expectancy. The direct effect of evaluation on expectancy is the strongest, then the next is the effect of attention on hope. The regression coefficients of attention to evaluation and hope and of hope to expectancy are negative. Analysis on the individual's characteristics shows that there is no effect of gender on cognitive factors in the ways of the feature and direction of the relationship, but there is effect of gender on cognitive factors in the ways of path coefficients among the factors. There is effect of age on cognitive factors in the ways of the strength of the relationship among the factors. There is effect of occupation and educational background not only in the ways of the feature of the relationship among the cognitive factors, but also in the ways of the strength of the relationship among the factors. The results show that the individual's characters can have effect on the rules of his/her cognitive structure.The relationship between cognitive factors and emotions was analyzed by the means of stepwise regression. The results show that there is direct effect of attention, evaluation and hope on emotions. There is no effect of expectancy on emotions. There is indirect effect of cause attribution on emotion through the means of hope. The absolute value of path coefficient of attention to emotions is the largest The absolute value of path coefficient of evaluation and attribution to emotions is the second largest. The path coefficients of attention and cause attribution to hope are negative. There is direct effect of emotions on attention, evaluation, and hope. There is indirect effect of emotions on cause attribution and expectancy through the means of other factors. The largest absolute value among path coefficients is the one of emotions to attention. Then the second largest is the one of emotions to evaluation. The third largest is the one of emotions to hope. Then is the one of emotions to expectancy. The smallest is the one of emotions to attribution. Among them, the path coefficients of emotions to attention and hope are negative.The results of factor analysis of Western Development behavior questionnaire shows that there are 4 types of behaviors, positive individual behavior, negative individual behavior, positive social behavior, and negative social behavior.The results of structured regression analysis of the relationship among cognitive factors and different types of behaviors show that attention can predict all types of...