Decision Making: A Core Problem of Social Cognition

Successful decision making involves our ability to understand the intensions, emotions and beliefs of other people. An important feature of decision making in a social setting concern the interaction of areas and Social cognition is an integral part of social psychology, which deals with the psychological mechanisms that mediate the individual’s responses to the social environment. Notable to social cognitive theories are the ideas which are applied and extended to many concepts, theories, models and paradigms from cognitive psychology in social context. This approach leads to remarkable progress in understanding of social scenario, people’s decisions and also offers insights into social issues. It helps to understand reactions of people in social context. Decision making is just one of the many areas in which social cognition has an important role. Decision making is a complex cognitive skill. Social cognition attempts to explain the broad social aspects of human experience, such as how decision making are influenced by the presence of others as well as the social situations in which they find themselves. This article presents a fundamental idea of social cognitive perspective of decision making process and factors that influence our decisions.