ABSTRACT
When I look at my friend who is your enemy, I see a person quite different from the person you see. My image of you, also, is quite different from your image of yourself. Wherein lies the truth, or is it all socially constructed illusion? The purpose of this chapter is to introduce an account of how cognitive structures designed to process information about self and others evolved in the human species. We begin by reviewing research showing that people categorize mem" bers of their in-groups differently from members of their out-groups. We demonstrate that such categorization influences social judgments: People view in-group members, including themselves, in more positive ways than they view out-group members. We consider psychological and evolutionary explanations of biases in social cognition, then sketch a model of mutual social support for self-servipLg illusions.
