ABSTRACT
The psychological processes that underlie judgments of persons and situations are at the core of social cognition. If we understand how social judgments are generated, we have learned about those underlying processes, and about how people construe (e.g., Carlston, 1980) and evaluate (e.g., Fiske & Pavelchak, 1986) their social environment. More importantly, armed with such knowledge, we can better predict how people will behave (cf. Fazio, 1986). The benefits of explaining how people arrive at a judgment extend well beyond an understanding of the specific subject matter of that judgment; indeed, a comprehensive model of human judgment delineates the processes that mediate between the social environment and its effects on human thoughts, emotions, and actions.
