ABSTRACT
How good is normal human judgment? Much of the scholarship in psychology (especially social psychology) and related disciplines has long suggested that it is not very good at all. Perspectives emphasizing error, bias, and how social beliefs create social reality have dominated the literature on social cognition (for example, Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Kahneman & Tversky, 1973; Ross Lepper, & Ward, 2010). These views have created an image of a social perceiver whose misbegotten beliefs and flawed processes construct not only illusions of social reality in the perceiver’s mind, but actual social reality through processes such as self-fulfilling prophecies. In this bleak view, the mind becomes primarily a product of cognitive shortcomings and distorted social interactions.
