Coherence-based reasoning

Over the last 10 years we have been exploring the implications of considering legal and everyday decision making in terms of the role of parallel constraint satisfaction processes in a network of cognitive and emotional elements. With Dan Simon we are extending our earlier work to the role of hot cognition (motivation and emotion) in coherence-based reasoning.

We have argued that coherence-based reasoning is a general mechanism of human cognition and that classic cognitive consistency theories in social psychology, including Cognitive Dissonance, can be understood in terms of coherence-based processing.

  • Stephen J. Read
  • Mendel B. Silberberg Professor of Social Psychology
  • Department of Psychology
  • 501 SGM
  • University of Southern California
  • Los Angeles, CA
  • 90089-1061