ABSTRACT
People want to be—or at least to believe that they are—accurate or otherwise appropriate in their perceptions of the social world. They want to form optimal impressions of people, buy products they will continue to like, and support political candidates or policies that they can defend to others. Yet, many personal and contextual factors can get in the way of forming the ideal opinion. Friends might pressure people to support certain views. Celebrities might advocate subpar products, or comparisons of target people or objects with contextual stimuli might create assimilation toward or contrast away from the contextual stimuli. How do people cope with these threats to forming accurate or otherwise reasonable opinions and perceptions?
