People have the ability to estimate frequencies of different behaviors, beliefs, and intentions of others, allowing them to fit into their immediate social worlds, learn from, and cooperate with others. However, psychology has produced a long list of apparent biases in social cognition. We show that this apparent contradiction can be resolved by understanding how cognitive processes underlying social judgments interact with the properties of social and task environments. We describe our social sampling model that incorporates this interaction and can explain biases in people’s estimates of broader populations. We also show that asking people about their social circles produces better predictions of elections than asking about their own voting intentions, provides good description of population attributes, and helps predict people’s future voting and vaccination behavior.

This chapter discusses how self-esteem is currently defined across common CBT and REBT literature. It aims to establish if there is a clear consensus as to what constitutes low, healthy, and high self-esteem, and implications this may have on clinical practice. Definitions of self-esteem within the DSM-5 and ICD-10 are reviewed, as well as cognitive and affective models of self-esteem. Definitions of self-esteem differ widely both across CBT and REBT as well as within CBT and REBT. Definitions are inconsistent within the DSM-5 and ICD-10. Conflation of beliefs, emotions, and constructs of self-esteem occur across research and within CBT and REBT, but is less frequent in REBT. Inconsistencies are more prevalent within CBT literature, which may be problematic, as points of intervention may therefore differ depending on theoretical understanding and definition of constructs of self-esteem.