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Rating: 
Summary: A valuable corrective
Review: By the mid 1980s in social and cogntive psychology, the idea that people were generally quite good at accurately reading other people's personalities, and figuring out the causes for each other's behavior, lay in tatters. A great deal of research on errors and biases (by folk like Nisbett and Tversky) apparently revealed that ordinary human cogntion was beset by a huge range of invidious social judgment biases including the underutilization of base rates, the fundamental attribution error, belief perseverance, overconfidence in social judgement, and sheer statistical incompetence, to name but a few. One of the most influential figures in psychology in correcting this bleak view of human social cognition is David Funder. His sustained theoretical and research program has shown that people are frequently surprisingly accurate in their personality readings. More tellingly, he has ducumented many of the conditions under which people can be expected to produce accurate attributions, and when they are are likely to go wrong. In the process, he has also produced some critical theoretical advances in explaining how personality attribution works in the real world. Funder's new book provides a concise summary of his work and theory. It is beautifully written, in a breezy and lively fashion (rare features in academic treatises). It is also provocative and erudite. Well worth a read for any student of human nature.
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