Advances in Bias and Accuracy in Social Cognition

Dear Colleagues,

Social cognition refers to the processes that people use to make sense of themselves and other people (Kunda, 1999). For decades, research on social cognition mainly focused on biases (e.g., Jones & Harris, 1967). However, in more recent decades, evidence has accumulated showing that social cognitive processes and the social judgments that result from these processes can also be accurate (e.g., Jussim, 2012; Mignault et al., 2026).

This Special Issue will seek to advance our understanding of the dynamic interplay between bias and accuracy in social cognition with the aim of fostering integration across these research traditions. While bias and accuracy can be viewed as theoretically distinct, bias and accuracy can also be viewed as complementary rather than exclusively competing features of social judgment (e.g., Stern et al., 2013; West & Kenny, 2011). The contents of this Special Issue (papers on bias, accuracy, or both bias and accuracy in social cognition) will allow the reader to synthesize information relevant to these seemingly competing forces in social cognition. We also hope to include papers on how these principles may apply to judgments within the realm of topics traditionally studied by sociologists. By bringing together contemporary work on both biased and accurate social cognition, this Special Issue will supplement the existing literature by promoting further theoretical integration, encouraging methodological innovation, and highlighting emerging questions about the conditions under which social cognition is prone to bias, accurate, or both prone to bias and accurate. Moreover, if we can achieve the goal of bridging psychological and sociological perspectives, that would also be a unique contribution to the extant literature. In fulfilling these aims, this Special Issue aims to advance a more comprehensive understanding of human social cognition.

We invite papers focusing on empirical, theoretical, and methodological advances that illuminate when social cognition is biased, when it is accurate, and when bias and accuracy coexist within the same cognitive processes (e.g., Stern et al., 2013). Please note that we welcome papers on stereotypes and prejudice as long as they relate to bias as it contrasts with accuracy in social cognition as opposed to purely investigating the nature of intergroup biases. We also invite papers from the field of sociology that apply social cognition to sociological issues or that investigate how structural factors shape accurate or biased social cognition. Contributions from social psychology, cognitive psychology, sociology, psychology and law, political psychology, neuroscience, and related disciplines are welcome, and contributions should fall into one of the journal’s three major categories of papers: article, conceptual paper, or review paper.

Relevant topics from the field of psychology include, but are not limited to:

• Bias and accuracy in person perception;
• Bias and accuracy in impression formation;
• Bias and accuracy in perceptions of social groups;
• Bias and accuracy in social prediction;
• Bias and accuracy in metaperception;
• How self-enhancement and self-serving biases affect bias and accuracy in social judgments;
• Cognitive biases as they relate to social judgments;
• Motivated reasoning as it relates to bias and accuracy in social judgments;
• Bias and accuracy in social memory and learning;
• Bias and accuracy in relationship perceptions;
• Bias and accuracy in persuasive message processing;
• Attribution processes as they relate to bias and accuracy in social judgments;
• Measurement of bias and accuracy in social cognition;
• Cultural differences in bias and accuracy in social cognition;
• Neural correlates of bias and accuracy in social cognition.

Relevant topics from the field of sociology include, but are not limited to:

• Bias and accuracy in social status and prestige judgments;
• Bias and accuracy in lay perceptions of social inequality and stratification;
• Bias and accuracy in assessments of social norms and conformity;
• How structural factors shape biased or accurate social cognition.

References

Jones, E. E., & Harris, V. A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3(1), 1-24.

Jussim, L. (2012). Social perception and social reality: Why accuracy dominates bias and self-fulfilling prophecy. OUP USA.

Kunda, Z. (1999). Social cognition: Making sense of people. MIT press.

Mignault, M. C., Tissera, H., Cecere, J., Fargnoli-Brown, Z., & Human, L. (2026). Perceiving others through a screen: Are first impressions of personality accurate and normative via videoconferencing?. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 52(1), 22-38.

Stern, C., West, T. V., & Schoenthaler, A. (2013). The dynamic relationship between accuracy and bias in social perception research. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(5), 303-314.

West, T. V., & Kenny, D. A. (2011). The truth and bias model of judgment. Psychological review, 118(2), 357.

Best wishes,

Dr. Rachel S. Rubinstein
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• social cognition
• bias
• accuracy
• social judgment
• social perception