Social episodes and group milieu: A study in social cognition

The cognitive representation of social episodes in two intact sports teams, matched for size ( n = 15), age, subcultural background, intelligence, SES and longevity of membership was studied. Based on recent approaches to social cognition, and on symbolic interactionist theory, it was expected that three indices of episode perception (differentiation, integration and consensus) would significantly reflect the different interaction styles of these matched groups. Members' ratings of their social episodes (selected in an open‐ended pilot study) were analysed by an Individual Differences Multidimensional Scaling (INDSCAL) analysis. Results showed that the group with a more intensive interaction milieu had ( a ) a more complex and differentiated episode domain, ( b ) showing a better overall integration of different kinds of episodes, and ( c ) there was a significantly greater consensus in their cognitive representation of episodes. It is suggested that the present techniques offer an appropriate way of identifying and labelling cognitive scripts about interaction episodes, and allow the quantification of the structural properties of such scripts.