Prof. Dr. Herbert Bless

Project A8

Mikrosoziologie und Sozialpsychologie
Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften
Universität Mannheim

Herbert Bless was born in 1959, studied Psychology at the University of Heidelberg, received his diploma in 1986, and finished his dissertation in 1989. Between his diploma and his dissertation, he studied for one year at the University of California, Santa Barbara. After holding research positions at the University of Heidelberg and Mannheim, and after holding a position at the University of Trier, he returned to the University of Mannheim in 1999. He is mainly interested in cognitive processes that mediate social judgment and behavior (social cognition, experimental social psychology). In this context, he investigates assimilation and contrast effects in social judgment, and the role of subjective experiences that accompany individuals´ information processing.

Selected Publications

• Bless, H. & Forgas, J.P. (2000), (Eds.). The message within. The role of subjective experience in social cognition and behavior. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
• Igou, E.R. & Bless, H. (2003), Inferring the importance of arguments: Order effects and conversational rules. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 91-99.
• Ruder, M. & Bless, H. (2003), Mood and the reliance on the ease of retrieval heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 20-32.
• Abele, S., Bless, H., & Ehrhart (2004), Social Information Processing in Strategic Decision-making: Why Timing Matters. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 93. 28-46.
• Keller, J., & Bless, H. (in press), When negative expectancies turn into negative performance: The role of ease of retrieval. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.