It’s hard to imagine a more fundamental question for psychology than what it is that makes us human. It’s harder still to come up with an acceptable answer. Great thinkers through the ages have puzzled over the nature of human nature, and so have contemporary psychological theorists. Are we rational animals, intuitive scientists, naked apes, information-processing machines, or battlefields of intrapsychic conflict? Many writers have made suggestions about what makes us human or wthat defines our humanity, some less serious than others (Mark Twain: "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or...

How do you make sense of Barack Obama and John McCain? The odds are that you judge them mainly on two dimensions: warm/cold and (in)competence. Depending on your experience of them, you may judge one of them as both warm and competent, evoking your admiration and pride; and perhaps the other as neither warm nor competent, which triggers a sense of contempt and disgust. Or perhaps you view one as warm but not competent, which generates pity and sympathy; or finally, you could judge one of them as cold but competent, leading to feelings of resentment and even envy. All the media hoopla boils...

People are special. Person perception is quite different from rock perception, for example. Geologists, those with a rock in their shoe, and pet rock owners aside, the perception of a rock is often merely the perception of a collection of lines and surfaces. Yet people are not simply collections of lines and surfaces. People have inner worlds such as mental states and emotions, and unique expressions of those inner worlds, such as personalities, emotional expressions, and behaviors. The study of person perception examines how we perceive people and infer their inner worlds from our...