Social Metacognition

Book excerpt: Metacognition refers to thinking about our own thinking. It has assumed a prominent role in social judgment because our thoughts about our thoughts can magnify, attenuate, or even reverse the impact of primary cognition. Metacognitive thoughts can also produce changes in thought, feeling, and behavior, and thus are critical for a complete understanding of human social behavior. The present volume presents the most important and advanced research areas in social psychology where the role of metacognition has been studied. Specifically, the chapters of this book are organized into four substantive content areas: Attitudes and Decision Making, Self and Identity, Experiential, and Interpersonal. Each section consists in several chapters summarizing much of the work done in recent decades on critical topics, such as attitude strength, persuasion, bias correction, self-regulation, subjective feelings, embodiment, and prejudice, among others. This book also emphasizes interpersonal aspects of metacognition as they play an essential role in close relationships, groups, consumer and clinical interactions. Each chapter is written by an expert in the field, and presents a state-of-the-art view of the many ways metacognition has been examined by social psychologists.