Social Cognition

Abstract

The study of interpersonal perception is concerned with the processes we use to form impressions of other people. Because we receive so much complex information, we all have to be selective in what we notice, learn and remember and we need to simplify by using mental short-cuts; these short-cuts have been called heuristics. This simplification is absolutely necessary: we could not possibly cope with all the social information with which we are bombarded without some simplification and organisation, but the strategies we use can encourage bias and inaccuracies in person perception. We use many heuristic strategies when processing information; we will consider four main ones:

• 1. Implicit personality theory

• 2. The halo effect

• 3. Stereotyping

• 4. The primacy effect.