Social reality makes the social mind: Self-fulfilling prophecy, stereotypes, bias, and accuracy

This paper contests social psychology’s emphasis on the biased, erroneous, and constructed nature of social cognition by: (1) showing how the extent of bias and error in classic research is overstated; (2) summarizing research regarding the accuracy of social beliefs; and (3) describing how social stereotypes sometimes improve person perception accuracy. A Goodness of Judgment Index is also presented to extract evidence regarding accuracy from research focusing on bias. We conclude that accuracy is necessary for understanding social cognition.