cognitive miser

Within social psychology, cognitive miser is an umbrella theory of social cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attributional biases. The theory suggests that humans, valuing their mental processing resources, find different ways to save time and effort when negotiating the social world. The term cognitive miser was first introduced by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor in 1991. It is an important concept in social cognition theory and has been influential in other social sciences including but not exclusive to economics and political science.