The Psychology of Being " Right " : The Problem of Accuracy in Social Perception and Cognition

Several difficulties are noted with general questions psychologists have been asking about human accuracy, such as whether people are typically accurate or inaccurate, what the boundary conditions for accuracy are, or the general process whereby accuracy may be improved. Instead, a situationally specific approach to accuracy is adopted in which a central role is assigned to the judgmental process. Accordingly, two general paradigms are distinguished addressing accuracy from realistic and phenomenal perspectives. The realist paradigm focuses on subjects' judgments and the degree to which these correspond to an external criterion. The phenomenal paradigm focuses on subjects' internal criterion as well as their perceptions of the target judgment and the judgment-to-criterion correspondence. Research possibilities in each paradigm are noted. It is suggested that attention to judgmental factors may extend accuracy work in previously unexplored directions.

[1]  S. Fiske.  Social cognition and social perception. , 1993, Annual review of psychology.

[2]  Arie W. Kruglanski,et al.  Motivations for judging and knowing: Implications for causal attribution. , 1990 .

[3]  Gary James Jason,et al.  The Logic of Scientific Discovery , 1988 .

[4]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Illusion and well-being: a social psychological perspective on mental health. , 1988, Psychological bulletin.

[5]  R. Hastie,et al.  The concept of accuracy in social judgment. , 1988 .

[6]  L. Abramson,et al.  Depressive realism: Four theoretical perspectives. , 1988 .

[7]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Accuracy in interpersonal perception: a social relations analysis. , 1987, Psychological bulletin.

[8]  A. Kruglanski,et al.  A view from a bridge: Synthesizing the consistency and attribution paradigms from a lay epistemic perspective , 1987 .

[9]  Shelly Chaiken,et al.  Attitudes and Attitude Change , 1987 .

[10]  John F. Kihlstrom,et al.  Personality and social intelligence , 1987 .

[11]  H. Kelley.  Attribution in social interaction. , 1987 .

[12]  J. Bargh,et al.  Social cognition and social perception. , 1987, Annual review of psychology.

[13]  D. Funder,et al.  Errors and mistakes: evaluating the accuracy of social judgment. , 1987, Psychological bulletin.

[14]  D. Krantz,et al.  The effects of statistical training on thinking about everyday problems , 1986, Cognitive Psychology.

[15]  L. Ross,et al.  The hostile media phenomenon: biased perception and perceptions of media bias in coverage of the Beirut massacre. , 1985, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[16]  J. Bargh,et al.  Nature of Priming Effects on Categorization , 1985 .

[17]  W. Swann,et al.  Quest for accuracy in person perception: a matter of pragmatics. , 1984, Psychological review.

[18]  M. Lepper,et al.  Considering the opposite: a corrective strategy for social judgment. , 1984, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[19]  T. M. Amabile.  The social psychology of creativity , 1984 .

[20]  Yaacov Trope,et al.  Information-gathering strategies in hypothesis-testing , 1983 .

[21]  D. Krantz,et al.  The use of statistical heuristics in everyday inductive reasoning , 1983 .

[22]  David H. Krantz,et al.  Inductive reasoning: Competence or skill? , 1983, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[23]  A. Kruglanski,et al.  The freezing and unfreezing of lay-inferences: Effects on impressional primacy, ethnic stereotyping, and numerical anchoring ☆ , 1983 .

[24]  R. Baron,et al.  Toward an Ecological Theory of Social Perception , 1983 .

[25]  Arie W. Kruglanski,et al.  Bias and error in human judgment , 1983 .

[26]  Richard A. Griggs,et al.  The elusive thematic‐materials effect in Wason's selection task , 1982 .

[27]  E. Higgins,et al.  Individual construct accessibility and subjective impressions and recall. , 1982 .

[28]  A. Tversky,et al.  Judgment under Uncertainty , 1982 .

[29]  L. Abramson,et al.  Depression, nondepression, and cognitive illusions: reply to Schwartz. , 1981, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[30]  R. Hogarth,et al.  BEHAVIORAL DECISION THEORY: PROCESSES OF JUDGMENT AND CHOICE , 1981 .

[31]  T. K. Srull,et al.  Category accessibility: Some theoretical and empirical issues concerning the processing of social stimulus information , 1981 .

[32]  L. Ross,et al.  Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence , 1979 .

[33]  J. Eiser.  New Directions in Attribution Research . Vol. 1. Edited by J. H. Harvey, W. J. Ickes and R. F. Kidd, Hilldale, N. J.: Erlbaum, 1976. Pp. 467. Price £14.10. , 1978, Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy.

[34]  M. Snyder.  On the Self-Fulfilling Nature of Social Stereotypes. , 1977 .

[35]  I. Ajzen.  Intuitive theories of events and the effects of base-rate information on prediction. , 1977 .

[36]  B. Fischhoff,et al.  Behavioral Decision Theory , 1977 .

[37]  H. Markus.  Self-schemata and processing information about the self. , 1977 .

[38]  A. Tversky,et al.  Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases , 1974, Science.

[39]  J. Bruner.  Beyond the Information Given: Studies in the Psychology of Knowing , 1973 .

[40]  A. Tversky,et al.  On the psychology of prediction , 1973 .

[41]  D. Bem.  Self-Perception Theory , 1972 .

[42]  T. Kuhn,et al.  Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research? , 1970 .

[43]  I. Lakatos,et al.  Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes , 1970 .

[44]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .

[45]  Robert P. Abelson,et al.  Modes of resolution of belief dilemmas , 1959 .

[46]  G. Stone,et al.  The intermediary key in the analysis of interpersonal perception. , 1956, Psychological bulletin.

[47]  L. Cronbach,et al.  Conceptual and methodological problems in interpersonal perception. , 1955, Psychological review.

[48]  L. Cronbach.  Processes affecting scores on understanding of others and assumed similarity. , 1955, Psychological bulletin.

[49]  D. Levinson,et al.  „The authoritarian personality.“ Studies in Prejudice Series , 1950 .

[50]  A. Luchins.  Mechanization in problem solving: The effect of Einstellung. , 1942 .

[51]  William James,et al.  The Meaning of Truth , 1909 .