ABSTRACT
It seems almost like a truism that when individuals make sense of their social environment, form judgments, and plan behaviors, they use the information that comes to mind. And, the kind of information that comes to mind is a function of accessibility. In this respect, individuals’ judgments reflect the accessibility of concepts at the time of judgment. These concepts can be either chronically or temporarily accessible (cf. Förster & Liberman, 2007; Higgins, 1996), and the underlying mechanisms rely heavily on automatic processes in the form of a spreading activation from one activated concept to other associated concepts and inhibition patterns.
