It is not unusual for a festschrift to include offerings from several areas of study, but it is highly unusual for those areas to cross disciplinary lines. This book, in doing just that, is a testimony to Bob Abelson's impact on the disciplines of social psychology, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, and the applied areas of political psychology and decision-making. The contributors demonstrate that their association with Abelson, whether as students or colleagues, has resulted in an impressive intellectual cross-fertilization.

Contents: Preface. R.C. Schank, Goal-Based Scenarios. E. Langer, The Illusion of Calculated Decisions. J.L. Kolodner, From Natural Language Understanding to Case-Based Reasoning and Beyond: A Perspective on the Cognitive Model That Ties It All Together. K. Hammond, C.M. Seifert, Opportunistic Memory: "Be Prepared." W.G. Lehnert, Cognition, Computers, and Car Bombs: How Yale Prepared Me for the 1990s. I.J. Roseman, The Psychology of Strongly Held Beliefs: Theories of Ideological Structure and Individual Attachment. S.J. Read, L.C. Miller, Dissonance and Balance in Belief Systems: The Promise of Parallel Constraint Satisfaction Processes and Connectionist Modeling Approaches. M.R. Lepper, "Hot" Versus "Cold" Cognition: An Abelsonian Voyage. D.R. Kinder, Reason and Emotion in American Political Life. L.A. Zebrowitz, Facial Maturity and Political Prospects: Persuasive, Culpable, and Powerful Faces. M.P. Zanna, R.H. Fazio, M. Ross, The Persistence of Persuasion. R. Wilensky, Discourse, Probability and Inference. J.M. Jones, An Exploration of Temporality in Human Behavior.