The process of thinking about the social world is termed social cognition. It is how we interpret social events and how we respond to them. Social cognition consists of thoughts concerned with interpreting social events and responding appropriately. Social cognition is a very important part of social psychology because how we behave in a social situation will be determined by what we think about that situation. "Road Rage", a phenonmena you hear about in the news, is a dramatic example of the power of social thoughts over our behavior. Road rage involves drivers dueling down the highway because they interpreted some traffic infraction as a threat to their health, safety, or social standing. People showing road rage think they have been wronged on the highway so they are justified in responding with an obscene gesture, a honk of the horn, a shaken fist and in extreme cases, a motor-vehicular chase down the highway.

Clearly, how we interpret our social world will influence greatly how we behave in it. The number of variables in any social setting are so vast that we cannot give every one an in-depth examination. If this is so, why do so many of us function very well in a variety of different social situations, each with myriad variables demanding our attention?

Because the number of demands for your attention in the social world is so great we have developed heuristics or "mental shortcuts." These heuristics often help us arrive at correct conclusions in complex situations without having to consider every possible variable.

Let's look at an example.

Algorithm or Heuristic?