Interpersonal Cognition

Presenting state-of-the-art research from leading investigators, this volume examines the processes by which people understand their interpersonal experiences. Provided are fresh perspectives on how individuals glean social knowledge from past relationships and apply it in the here and now. Also explored are the effects of biases and expectancies about significant others on relationship satisfaction and personal well-being. Broad in scope, the book integrates findings from experimental social psychology with insights from developmental, personality, and clinical psychology. Throughout, chapters strike an appropriate balance between theory and method, offering an understanding of the core issues involved as well as the tools needed to study them.

Mark W. Baldwin, PhD, received his doctorate in 1984 from the University of Waterloo and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan and the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He then spent several years pursuing an opportunity to cowrite and cohost the award-winning children's television series Camp Cariboo. Returning to academia, Dr. Baldwin taught and researched psychology at the University of Winnipeg for 8 years before assuming his current position, in 1998, in the Department of Psychology at McGill University in Montreal. Along the way, he served as Chair of the Social and Personality section of the Canadian Psychological Association and Associate Editor of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and coauthored (with Rick Hoyle, Michael Kernis, and Mark Leary) the book Selfhood: Identity, Esteem, Regulation. His major research interests include interpersonal cognition, self-esteem, and adult attachment theory. Most recently, Dr. Baldwin and his students have been exploring the possibility of designing computer-based exercises to modify maladaptive automatic social cognition and have established the website www.selfesteemgames.mcgill.ca to report this research.