The Influence Of Cognitive Style On Different Social Cognitive Functions

Cognitive style refers to an individual's preferred and habitual approach in the information processing,which is regarded as a crucial individual difference.Previous studies have indicated that the individual differences of cognitive style not only influence the way of how information being processed,but also impact social behaviors.As we all know,there is a cognitive-social continuum of processing,namely,social cognition,that eventually determine the social outcomes.However,so far there is no research ever focused on whether and how cognitive style influences social cognitive functions.Exploring this issue could theoretically benefit the integration of different cognitive style researches into unified frameworks.Given that,in the present study we adopted different tasks reflecting various levels of social cognitive functions in order to probe into the individual differences of cognitive style from the perspective of social cognition.This study is composed of three experiments.Experiment 1 investigated the influence of cognitive style upon the primary social cognitive function of perspective taking.Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test(RMET)and YONI Task were adopted to explore the influence of cognitive style upon Theory of Mind(TOM)in Experiment 2.In Experiment 3,moral judgment tasks(moral transgression behavior and moral dilemma story)were employed to examine the influence of cognitive style upon the social cognition of morality.The following conclusions were reached:(1)Cognitive style significantly influences the primary social cognitive function of perspective taking.The wholists are advantageous to take the views of others.(2)Cognitive style significantly influences the higher-level social cognitive function of TOM that involving the social reasoning process.The wholists do better in inferring to others' mental state,including others' emotions and beliefs.(3)Cognitive style significantly influences moral judgments that involving the social reasoning process.The analytics make more utilitarian judgments in moral dilemmas.