Research on people’s accuracy in perceiving other people’s states, traits, and social attributes has existed for over 100 years. In the past few decades, however, it has exploded into a vibrant, interdisciplinary, and international pursuit with relevance to all areas of social, interpersonal, and intrapersonal life. However, researchers typically work within narrowly defined traditions within the field. The present volume brings these areas together to describe method, theory, and findings for seven content domains (judging emotions, thoughts and feelings, truth versus lie, personality, social attributes, others’ views of self, and group attitudes). Correlates at the group, individual, and situational levels are discussed, as well as the basic question: how accurate are people in judging other people? The strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in this field are discussed, and directions for future research are offered.

The accurate recognition of facial expressions is important for social interaction and interpersonal relationships. Many psychiatric disorders are characterized by social difficulties, including problems in recognizing the emotions of others. The disorders of autism, schizophrenia, depression, social anxiety, and borderline personality disorder all involve difficulties in social cognition, which include deficits in recognizing emotions. However, the nature of these difficulties within and between psychiatric disorders is not well understood. One problem is that differences in the methodologies and samples utilized within emotion research often make it difficult to make comparisons across studies and disorders. Despite these differences, some commonalities in deficits for perceiving emotional expressions have been noted within psychopathology, which include differences in processing of emotions involving negative valence. This may suggest dysfunction of a primary emotion system centered on the amygdala in the brain, although the exact nature of this dysfunction may vary between some disorders.

Research on people’s accuracy in perceiving other people’s states, traits, and social attributes has existed for over 100 years. In the past few decades, however, it has exploded into a vibrant, interdisciplinary, and international pursuit with relevance to all areas of social, interpersonal, and intrapersonal life. However, researchers typically work within narrowly defined traditions within the field. The present volume brings these areas together to describe method, theory, and findings for seven content domains (judging emotions, thoughts and feelings, truth versus lie, personality, social attributes, others’ views of self, and group attitudes). Correlates at the group, individual, and situational levels are discussed, as well as the basic question: how accurate are people in judging other people? The strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in this field are discussed, and directions for future research are offered.