The last semester of Fiske's senior year, she worked with Shelley Taylor, an assistant professor at Harvard, studying social cognition, particularly the effect attention has in social situations. After graduation, Fiske continued in the field of social cognition. There is conflict between the fields of social psychology and cognitive psychology, and some researchers want to keep these two fields separate. Fiske felt that significant knowledge could be attained by combining the fields. Fiske's experience with this conflict and her interest in the field of social cognition resulted in Fiske's and Taylor's book Social Cognition. This book provides an overview of the developing theories and concepts emerging in the field of social cognition, while explaining the use cognitive processes to understand social situations, ourselves and others. Fiske and Steven Neuberg went on to develop the first dual process model of social cognition, the "continuum model."
