ABSTRACT
The theme of this chapter is that the study of lay inference and judgement has been profoundly biased by an assumption that the preoccupations, fundamental categories and concepts, and even the tools and methods of professional scientists in their work are similar to those of ordinary people, if not exactly the same. This assumption has affected researchers’ ideas of what it is to be rational in social judgement and inference, of what people are trying to do when they make judgements and inferences, and of the kinds of topics and issues that are worth investigating, to the detriment of our understanding of lay judgement and inference. I propose a different idea of the function of social judgement and inference, different fundamental categories of judgement, and a different conceptual approach to the study of lay judgement.
