By Justin Landy

We judge others every day. Should I trust her? Is he dangerous? Is that group of people able to carry out this task successfully? And so on. It is hard to imagine how we could successfully navigate our complex social worlds if we did not routinely make such judgments. So, it is no surprise that social judgment has long been of interest to psychologists. Research in this general area dates at least to Solomon Asch’s (1946) seminal studies of impression formation and has continued unabated ever since. Over time, the field has expanded and evolved. Theories of interpersonal judgment informed research on intergroup judgment. Dimensional models emerged as a dominant theoretical framework (e.g., Fiske et al., 2002; Rosenberg et al., 1968). Following more general trends in psychology research, samples have gotten larger and much of the research has moved from the laboratory to online platforms.  But what remains unchanged is a fascination with and dedication to understanding how we form judgments of others in our social worlds, and the consequences of those judgments, from an empirical, scientific perspective.

That is why I am proud to be the editor of the Research Handbook on Social Judgment. My goal is to provide an overview of social judgment research, with a particular focus on the most recent, state-of-the-art research. I hope that this volume will be of value to a range of scholars interested in social judgment. For students just getting started in this field, each chapter of the book will get you up to speed on a key question that social judgment researchers are working on right now. For experienced researchers, the book should be a handy reference on the current state of this area of research. And, for instructors, the book would be appropriate as a text for an advanced undergraduate or graduate-level class on social judgment.

‘The formation of social judgment at both interpersonal and group levels is a classic yet remarkably rich and complex topic. I found this Handbook especially valuable in bringing together leading scholars and key advances that are often scattered across the literature. Its clear, rigorous overview of models and methods makes it an essential and inspiring resource for researchers, advanced students, and practitioners.’
– Simona Sacchi, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy

“Social judgment” is a very broad term, encompassing all kinds of judgments about agents in our social worlds. This includes judgments of individuals, groups, and even certain kinds of nonhuman targets. To systematize this complexity, the book is divided into six thematic sections. Section I introduces important theoretical and methodological considerations in the study of social judgment. Section II addresses judgments of individuals’ personalities, skills, and identities. Section III addresses specifically moral judgments of individuals. Section IV covers judgments of social groups, rather than individuals. Section V covers emerging research on social judgments of nonhuman targets, including animals, brands, and artificially intelligent agents. Lastly, Section VI covers social judgments in applied, real-world contexts.

The area of social judgment research is as broad as the term “social judgment” itself, spanning multiple traditional disciplines, so I made a conscious effort to solicit contributions from scholars from a wide array of backgrounds. The Research Handbook on Social Judgment incorporates perspectives from scholars with numerous different approaches, including neuroscientists, cognitive, social, and developmental psychologists, and judgment and decision making researchers. Moreover, I aimed to include chapters from both longstanding, established researchers and young, up-and-coming scholars who are shaping social judgment research today and who will drive the future of the field.

In sum, I consider this work to be a snapshot of where the field of social judgment research stands a quarter of the way through the 21^st century, as well as an indicator of where the field is headed next. We have learned much since Asch’s early studies, but there is still much work to be done. If you are one of the people undertaking that work, I hope that you learn as much from reading the Research Handbook on Social Judgment as I did from editing it.

Research Handbook on Social Judgment is edited by Justin F. Landy, Associate Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Nova Southeastern University, USA

Research Handbook on Social Judgment (publishing later in July 2026) is available to pre-order in hardback here.

The eBook version will become available to purchase once published here.