Choice perception: Making sense (and nonsense) of others’ decisions

People constantly and effortlessly acquire information about one another's decisions and use this information to form impressions (and judgments) of others. We review research on this process of choice perception — how people come to make sense of others’ choices. We suggest that choice perception consists of observers’ inferences about (a) what was chosen, (b) why it was chosen, (c) how (or through what process) it was chosen, and (d) broader impressions about who chose it. These inferences can affect observers in multiple ways, such as prompting erroneous beliefs about the actor due to interpersonal errors (i.e., mistakes in how observers perceive actors) and cue-perception errors (i.e., mistakes in how observers perceive chosen options), as well as changes in one's own behavior.