불일치-고난도

In social cognition, the perceiver is interested in attributes such as intelligence, trustworthiness, love, aggressiveness, or humour. Individuals have no sensory receptors for these attributes, which refer to distal entities that have to be inferred from more proximal cues, and sometimes have no objective existence at all. For example, we cannot directly observe the "aggressiveness" of a particular person. We can observe whether the person is hitting someone, and we may use this observation to infer aggressiveness. Because these kinds of attributes cannot be directly observed, their assessment requires far more constructive processing than the assessment of size or colour. To make social judgments, individuals must go beyond the information given far more than when judging inanimate objects. One may argue that even basic perceptions such as colour and size require a considerable degree of inference. However, in most cases, it is the social judgments that require far more inferential processes, and it is precisely this large proportion of constructive processes that makes social cognition a specific and unique process.