Contact: bassili@utsc.utoronto.ca
Degrees: Ph.D.: Cornell University B.A.: McGill University

The Cognitive Basis of Social Judgments

Research interests focus on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie social judgment processes. The primary focus at the present time is on response latency in the expression of opinions in telephone surveys. The relationship between response latency and mechanisms relevant to question interpretation, the retrieval of information from memory and the integration of information into a response are being investigated actively. Other research focuses on cognitive processes in the perception of people. Instructional technology has become a new focus of research interest, especially in the context of webcasting.

Representative Publications

Books, Chapters and Reviews:

  • Bassili, J. N. & Brown, R. (2005). Implicit and explicit attitudes: Research, challenges and theory. In D. Albarracín, B. T. Johnson, & M. P. Zanna. (Eds.), Handbook of Attitudes and Attitude Change. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Bassili, J. N. (2001). Cognitive Indices of Social Information Processing. Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol. 1: Intraindividual Processes.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1996) The "How" and "Why" of Response Latency Measurement in Survey Research. In N. Schwarz & S. Sudman (Eds.),Answering Questions: Methodology for determining cognitive and communicative processes in survey research (pp.319-346). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1996). Person Perception. In R. Dulbecco (Ed.) Encyclopedia of human biology (2nd edition), Academic Press.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1996) Inside the political mind. Review of Political Judgment: Structure and Process. Milton Lodge and Kathleen McGraw (Eds.) Contemporary Psychology. 41, 699-701.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1990). Cognitive signatures and their forgery: A critique of E. R. Smith's "Content and process specificity in the effects of prior experiences". In R. S. Wyer and T. K. Srull (Eds.) Advances in social cognition (Vol 3). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1990). Person Perception. In R. Dulbecco (Ed.) Encyclopedia of human biology, Academic Press.
  • MacLeod, C. M. and Bassili, J. N. (1989). Are implicit and explicit texts differentially sensitive to item-specific versus relational information in memory? In S. Lewandowsky, J. C. Dunn and K. Kitsner (Eds.) Implicit Memory: Theoretical Issues. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1989). Traits as action categories versus traits as person attributes in social cognition. In J. N. Bassili (Ed.) On-line cognition in person perception. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
  • Bassili, J. N. (Ed.) (1989) On-line cognition in person perception. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.

Articles on Attitudes:

  • Bassili, J. N. (2003). The Minority Slowness Effect: Subtle Inhibitions in the Expression of Views not Shared by Others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 261-276.
  • Bassili, J. N. (2000). Reflections on Response Latency Measurement in Telephone Surveys. Introductory article as guest editor of a special issue on response latency in survey research. Political Psychology, 21, 1-6.
  • Bassili, J. N. & Krosnick, J. A. (2000). Do Strength-Related Attitude Properties Determine Suceptibility to Response Effects? New Evidence Using Response Latency, Attitude Extremity, and Aggregate Indices. Political Psychology, 1, 107-134.
  • Bassili, J. N. & Roy, J-P (1998). On the Representation of Strong and Weak Attitudes about Policy in Memory. Political Psychology. 19, 669-681.
  • Bassili, J. N. & Bors, D. (1997). Using Response Latency to Increase Lead Time in Election Forecasting. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Sciences, 29, 231-238.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1997) As the Clock Ticks in Election Surveys. The Political Psychologist, 2, 6-8.
  • Bassili, J. N., & Scott, B. S. (1996) Response Latency as a Signal to Question Problems in Survey Research. Public Opinion Quarterly. 60, 390-399.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1996) Meta-Judgmental versus operative indices of psychological properties: The case of measures of attitude strength. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 637-653.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1995) On the Psychological Reality of Party Identification: Evidence from the Accessibility of Voting Intentions and of Partisan Feelings. Political Behavior, 17, 339-358.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1995) Response Latency and the Accessibility of Voting Intentions: What Contributes to Accessibility and How it Affects Vote Choice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 686-695.
  • Mellema, A., & Bassili, J.N. (1995) On the Relationship between Attitudes and Values: Exploring the Moderating Effects of Self-Monitoring and Self-Monitoring Schematicity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 885-892.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1994) The "How" and "Why" of Response Latency Measurement in Survey Research. In N. Schwarz & S. Sudman (Eds.), Cognitive processes in surveys. New York: Springer/Verlag.
  • Bassili J. N. (1993) Response Latency versus Certainty as Indices of the Strength of Voting Intentions in a CATI Survey, Public Opinion Quarterly, 57, 54-61.
  • Bassili, J. N., and Fletcher, J. F. (1991) Response-time measurement in survey research: A method for CATI and a new look at non-attitudes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55, 331-346.

Articles on Person Perception:

  • Bassili, J. N. (1993) Procedural efficiency and the spontaneity of trait inference. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 199-204.
  • Bassili, J. N., and Racine, J. P. (1991) On the process relationship between person and situation judgments in attribution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 881-890.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1989). Trait encoding in behavior identification and dispositional inference. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 285-296.
  • Bassili, J. N., Smith, M. C. and MacLeod, C. M. (1989). Presentation modality and type of processing effects on priming in auditory and visual word-stem completion. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Experimental Psychology. 41A, 439-453.
  • Bassili, J. N. and Provencal, A. (1988). Perceiving minorities: a factor-analytic approach. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 14, 5-15.
  • Bassili, J. N., and Smith, M. C. (1986). On the spontaneity of trait attribution: Converging evidence for the role of cognitive strategy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 239-245.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1981). The attractiveness stereotype: Goodness or glamour? Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 2, 235-252.
  • Bassili, J. N. and Reil, J. E. (1981). On the dominance of the old age stereotype. Journal of Gerontology, 36, 682-688.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1979). Emotion recognition: The role of facial movement and the relative importance of upper and lower areas of the face. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 2049-2058.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1978). Facial motion in the perception of faces and of emotional expressions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 4, 373-379.
  • Bassili, J. N. and Farber, J. M. (1977). Experiments on the locus of induced motion. Perception and Psychophysics, 21, 157-161.
  • Bassili, J. N. and Regan, D. T. (1977). Attributional focus as a determinant of information selection. Journal of Social Psychology, 101, 113-121.
  • Bassili, J. N. (1976). Temporal and spatial contingencies in the perception of social events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 680-685.
  • Taylor, D. M., Bassili, J. N., and Aboud, F. E. (1973). Dimensions of ethnic identity: An example from Quebec. Journal of Social Psychology, 89, 185-192.

Other Activities

  • Chair, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough
  • Past Associate Chair (Psychology), Department of Life Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough
  • Past member of the editorial board of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Attitudes and Social Cognition)
  • Past Associate Editor of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
  • Past Chair of Scarborough College Council
  • Past Chair of Scarborough College Academic Affairs Committee
  • Past Program Supervisor for Psychology

Funding

  • Most of this research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
  • One NSERC grant also contributed to the research.