ABSTRACT
The used-car salesman promises you that this car is a real creampuff—the former owner serviced it every 3,000 miles and nothing can possibly go wrong with it. Do you believe him and buy the car? Any theory of social judgment, applied to situations like this, must contain answers to two basic questions. First; What information does the perceiver use? Are your readings of the salesman’s nonverbal cues, the words he speaks, or your belief that used-car salesmen are typically dishonest brought to bear in making this decision? Second; How is the information processed? Are the available items of information simply weighted and combined, or used in some more complex, configural way to categorize or characterize the judgment target? In this chapter, I briefly review the major current theories of social judgment within this framework. I then describe a new theory that gives very different answers to these two basic questions. In the rest of the chapter I cite some preliminary evidence that, I hope, gives my advocacy of the theory more credibility than the used-car salesman’s claims.
