We are currently exploring three lines of research that center around mechanisms and malleability of social perception. To explore these, we integrate theories and methods from social psychology, vision science, cognitive neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.
1. Stereotyping based on facial appearance
People spontaneously make inferences about others based solely on facial appearance, even when faces provide no actual diagnostic information. In other words, similar to how people stereotype others based on social group memberships (e.g., race, gender), they also form stereotypes based on facial features. These biases can influence behavior in meaningful and consequential ways. Our lab investigates the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying facial stereotyping, as well as its malleability. Recent questions in this line of work include:
- What roles do the social group memberships of both perceivers and targets play in shaping facial stereotyping?
- What are the characteristics of individuals who stereotype others based on facial appearance versus those who do not?
- Can we disentangle—or integrate—stereotyping based on social categories and stereotyping based on facial features?
2. Interventions to shift social perception and judgments
This line of research focuses on how interventions can alter trait impressions drawn from facial appearance or social category cues, especially in cases where these impressions are not grounded in valid or meaningful information. We explore the cognitive mechanisms behind these shifts and the potential for promoting more flexible and accurate social evaluations. Recent questions in this line of work include:
- Can interventions reduce the influence of facial appearance on consequential social judgments?
- Do changes in appearance-based impressions lead to parallel changes in category-based impressions (and vice versa), given potential shared mechanisms?
- Can we achieve sustainable, long-term changes in social evaluations, and if so, what does this reveal about the flexibility of underlying cognitive or neural systems?
3. Dynamic social perception
This line of research examines how people perceive and make sense of others in more complex, real-world settings. Moving beyond static images, we study how social perception unfolds over time, across multiple channels of information, and from different social vantage points. Recent questions in this line of work include:
- Are there consistent linguistic or behavioral patterns that reveal how people make sense of particular social situations, such as intergroup conflict or competition?
- Can different channels of information—visual, auditory, contextual—be disentangled in dynamic social settings, and how do they shape final impressions?
- Do individuals who are targets of social bias interpret and navigate the social world differently than those who are not?