Social Judgment

In broad terms, social judgement is concerned with how we make sense of our social world. How do people form impressions of the world around them, and how do they communicate these impressions through their expressive behaviour? This book is about the relevance of these processes for social psychology and for some of its major areas of theoretical and practical concern - including attitudes, impressions of other people and social groups, self-appraisals and the interplay of emotion and rationality. As a field of research, social judgement lies at a meeting point of many classical and contemporary traditions in general and social psychology.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Judgement and the psychophysicists: what is social judgement?; psychophysical scaling; attitude scales; multiple attributes and multiple indicators; beyond perception. Part 2 The relativity of judgement: contrast and adaptation-level; perceptual versus semantic shifts; frame of reference; the frequency compromise; stimulus distinctiveness and stimulus relevance; norm theory. Part 3 Categorization: categorization and information; effects of value on perceptual judgements; value as a cue; superimposed cues and classifications; categorization, integration and distinctiveness; category accessibility; contrast and local norms; stereotyping , categorization and distinctiveness; categorization, differentiation and prejudice. Part 4 Attitudinal judgement - assimilation-contrast and perspective: the method of equal-appearing intervals; own opinion as an anchor; anchoring, assimilation and contrast; the assimilation-contrast model of attitudinal judgement; involvement and subject categories; range and perspective; expectations of response range; the "content-rating" distinction; memory for ratings - the change-of-standard" effect; measurement, anchoring and the language of judgement. Part 5 Accentuation and evaluative language: accentuation theory; value connotations; reinterpreting previous findings; the interactive effect of attitude and response language; value and extremity; categorization, congruity and the appropriateness of the response language; salience and selectivity; language, persuasion ans attitude maintenance. Part 6 Judgement and uncertainty; attribution and prediction; cognitive heuristics; decision frame and prospects; signal detection theory; judgement of risks; judging the quality of others' decisions. Part 7 Judgement and mood: affect and cognition; cognitive labelling; attributions and mood; the relativity of happiness; comparison level and interpersonal exchange; comparison standards and self-evaluations; priming effects of mood on recall; mood as information; mood and asymmetrics of processing.