Crimes, Vacations, and Political Candidates: The Construction and Use of Narratives in Social Judgments

The discussion of comprehension processes in the preceding chapters was focused largely on the construction of narrative representations of social experience. To the extent that these representations occupy the bulk of our social knowledge (Schank & Abelson, 1995), they are correspondingly the primary basis for judgments and decision to which this knowledge is relevant. In this section, we consider the conditions in which narrative representations are brought to bear on judgments and decisions and the processes that underlie their use.