Professor Sherman has research interests in the following areas:

(1) Perceiving groups and perceiving individuals. This work focuses on similarities and differences in the processes by which we form impressions of groups (e.g., stereotypes) and the processes involved in impression formation of individuals. Some of the issues involved are: memory based versus on-line processing; illusory correlation; group types (e.g., intimacy and task groups, social categories); entitativity of social objects.

(2) Counterfactual thinking. This program of research investigates several aspects of counterfactual generation: The functions of counterfactual thought; the role of counterfactual generation in explaining differences between reactions to general versus specific information and outcomes; the factors that render counterfactual thoughts more or less potent in affective behavior, judgment, and emotions.

(3) Psychology and the law. This work analyzes the ways in which psychology theory and research can be used to inform legal doctrine, legal principles, and decisions in both civil and criminal law.

(4) Models of preference, in particular a Feature Matching model (related to Tversky's contrast model for similarity). This model is applied to detection of change, preferences, approach-avoidance conflict, post-decision regret, social comparison, and categorization. The model involves the factors of shared and unique features of items in the choice set and direction of comparison.

(5) The role of language in affecting the representation of objects and how this affects categorization, similarity judgments, and stereotypes.

(6) The use of a categorization model (Attention Theory, Kruschke) to account for the development of stereotypes and hypodescent.

Primary Interests:

Group Processes
Judgment and Decision Making
Law and Public Policy
Person Perception
Persuasion, Social Influence
Social Cognition

Group Processes
Judgment and Decision Making
Law and Public Policy

Person Perception
Persuasion, Social Influence
Social Cognition

Research Group or Laboratory:

Sherman Social Cogntion Research Laboratory
Interactive Map

Journal Articles:

Crawford, M. T., Sherman, S. J., & Hamilton, D. L. (2002). Perceived entitativity, stereotype formation, and the interchangeability of group members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1076-1094.
Dhar, R., Nowlis, S. M., & Sherman, S. J. (1999). Comparison effects on the construction of consumer preferences. Journal of Consumer Research, 26, 293-306.
Ferreira, M. B., Garcia-Marques, L., Sherman, S. J., & Sherman, J. W. (2006). Automatic and controlled components of judgment and decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 797-813.
Hamilton, D. L., & Sherman, S. J. (1996). Perceiving persons and groups. Psychological Review, 103, 336-355.
Percy, E. J., Sherman, S. J., Garcia-Marques, L., Mata, A., & Garcia-Marques, T. (2009). Cognition and native language grammar: The organizational role of adjective-noun word order in information representation. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 16, 1037-1042.
Petrocelli, J. V., & Sherman, S. J. (2010). Event detail and confidence in gambling: The role of counterfactual thought reactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 61-72.
Sherman, J. W., Kruschke, J. K., Sherman, S. J., Percy, E. T., Petrocelli, J. V., & Conrey, F. R. (2009). Attentional processes in stereotype formation: A common model for category accentuation and illusory correlation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 305-323.
Sherman, S. J., & Hoffmann, J. L. (2007). The psychology and law of voluntary manslaughter. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 20, 499-519.
Sherman, S. J., Houston, D. A., & Eddy, D. (1999). Cancellation-and-focus: A feature matching model of choice. European Review of Social Psychology, 10, 169-197.
Sherman, S. J., & McConnell, A. R. (1996). The role of counterfactual thinking in reasoning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, 113-124.
Spencer-Rodgers, J., Hamilton, D. L., & Sherman, S. J. (2007). The central role of entitativity in stereotypes of social categories and task groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 369-388.

Other Publications:

Beike, D. R., & Sherman, S. J. (1994). Social inference: Inductions, deductions, and analogies. In R. S. Wyer & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of Social Cognition (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 209-285). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hamilton, D. L., Sherman, S. J., Crump, S. A., & Spencer-Rodgers, J. (2009). The role of entitativity in stereotyping: Processes and parameters. In T. D. Nelson (Ed.), Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination (pp. 179-198). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Johnson, M. K., & Sherman, S. J. (1990). Constructing and reconstructing the past and the future in the present. In E. T. Higgins & R. M. Sorrentino (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 482-526). New York: Guilford Press.
Sherman, S. J., Beike, D. R., & Ryalls, K. R. (1999). Dual-processing accounts of inconsistencies in responses to general versus specific cases. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual process theories in social psychology (pp. 203-227). New York: Guilford.

Jim Sherman
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Indiana University Bloomington
1101 E. Tenth Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-7007
United States

Phone: (812) 855-8163