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social judgment

As is true for judgments about the self, judgments about others strongly depend on comparison processes(Mussweiler, 2003) ). Here the self constitutes a particularly prominent comparison standard, so that we often judge others by comparing them to ourselves (Mussweiler, Epstude, & Rüter, 2005). Whenever we judge a given person or target, it thus seems, we do so by comparing this target to a pertinent standard. Why are comparisons so ubiquitous? Our research suggests that this is the case because comparative information processing allows us to make judgments in a more efficient manner. Comparisons may thus serve as an all-purpose heuristic that allows us to save scarce cognitive resources.