Social Context and Cognitive Performance

Based on 20 years of research on the social regulation of academic performances, this book offers theoretical and empirical arguments in favor of the inclusion of the social dimension of human beings as essential for their cognitive activities. We all engage in social interactions, compare ourselves with other people, belong to social groups, and are the object of a myriad of categorizations. Not only do such social experiences affect cognition, but they actually determine its form and its content. Several experiments indeed reveal that cognitive performance depends on the relationship between the individual and the social context in which cognition takes place. And this relationship is not forged directly by features of the situation, but rather by personal construals of these features (most notably social comparison).