This chapter discusses the growing body of research that examines the social cognitive processes of jurors used when making verdict or sentencing decisions. This includes the empirical findings related to priming ideas and attitudes and impression formation. The chapter then discusses heuristics, or cognitive “shortcuts,” that jurors employ during their decision-making processes in trials and deliberations. For instance, there is a tendency for jurors to over-rely on dispositional attributions, stereotypes, and schemas. Cognitive biases that jurors are prone to, such as the hindsight bias, the outcome bias, and counterfactual thinking, will also be discussed in the context of evaluating evidence and making verdict decisions, along with the potential of debiasing techniques. Finally, jurors’ biases and prejudices regarding factors, such as race, gender, and religion, and how they relate to decision-making are examined. The chapter also addresses areas of social cognition that have not yet been explored in current research and provides recommendations for future directions.

We form impressions of strangers rapidly, readily and without needing to be prompted. Impressions created by facial cues are particularly pervasive, affecting society and the economy in a myriad of ways. This chapter will consider the role of age-related facial cues in forming impressions, by drawing on data-driven modelling of impressions of naturalistic faces. To achieve a broad perspective, we take a lifespan approach to evaluate how apparent age contributes to impression formation. Future research should focus on developing large-scale longitudinal and diverse databases of face images.

Forming impressions of trustworthiness about social partners is critical to making adaptive decisions in novel social environments and maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships. However, such impressions can also be biased and lead to maladaptive or harmful trust decisions. In this chapter, we discuss the neurobiological underpinnings of how initial impressions of one’s trustworthiness and the reputation we assign them inform social decision making. We first focus on rapid initial impressions of perceived trustworthiness and how they can be biased by social and contextual information. Next, we review how trustworthiness reputations are learned through novel social interactions and are shaped by prior knowledge, particularly in the context of established interpersonal relationships. Here, we focus primarily on the role of corticostriatal neural systems. Finally, we present emerging avenues of research on how impressions of trustworthiness and acquired reputations guide real-world decision making and are impacted by adverse environments.