Categorizing others: the dynamics of person construal

A fundamental question in social cognition is whether people categorize others on the basis of the social groups to which they belong. Integrating ideas from related work on face processing, the current research explored the emergence and boundary conditions of person categorization. Using speeded responses to facial stimuli as a marker of category activation, the authors showed in 3 experiments that person categorization: (a) occurs only under active-encoding conditions and (b) does not extend to applicable but task-irrelevant categorical dimensions, but (c) is sensitive to overlap in the perceptual features that support multiple categorical construals. The authors consider the implications of these findings for models of social-cognitive functioning and the component processes that support person perception.     

The perceptual determinants of person construal: reopening the social-cognitive toolbox

Guided by a heuristic account of social-cognitive functioning, researchers have attempted to identify the cognitive benefits that derive from a categorical approach to person construal. While revealing, this work has overlooked the fact that, prior to the application of categorical thinking as an economizing mental tool, perceivers must first extract category-triggering information from available stimulus cues. It is possible, therefore, that basic perceptual processes may also contribute to people's propensity to view others in a category-based manner. This possibility was explored in 3 experiments in which the authors investigated the ease with which perceivers can extract categorical and identity-based knowledge from faces under both optimal and suboptimal (i.e., inverted faces, blurred faces, rapidly presented faces) processing conditions. The results confirmed that categorical knowledge is extracted from faces more efficiently than identity-related knowledge, a finding that underscores the importance of perceptual operations in the generation of categorical thinking.     

A dynamic interactive theory of person construal

A dynamic interactive theory of person construal is proposed. It assumes that the perception of other people is accomplished by a dynamical system involving continuous interaction between social categories, stereotypes, high-level cognitive states, and the low-level processing of facial, vocal, and bodily cues. This system permits lower-level sensory perception and higher-order social cognition to dynamically coordinate across multiple interactive levels of processing to give rise to stable person construals. A recurrent connectionist model of this system is described, which accounts for major findings on (a) partial parallel activation and dynamic competition in categorization and stereotyping, (b) top-down influences of high-level cognitive states and stereotype activations on categorization, (c) bottom-up category interactions due to shared perceptual features, and (d) contextual and cross-modal effects on categorization. The system's probabilistic and continuously evolving activation states permit multiple construals to be flexibly active in parallel. These activation states are also able to be tightly yoked to ongoing changes in external perceptual cues and to ongoing changes in high-level cognitive states. The implications of a rapidly adaptive, dynamic, and interactive person construal system are discussed.     

Familiarity and person construal: Individuating knowledge moderates the automaticity of category activation

In this experiment, we examined how perceivers' familiarity with targets moderates person construal. Based on evidence from object categorization that level of construal varies with expertise in a manner that maximizes cue validity, we reasoned that although social (i.e., group‐level) categorization is functional for construing unfamiliar others (about whom little or no individuating information is available), it is less functional for familiar others (about whom a great deal of individuating information is available). Results from an automatic priming paradigm provided evidence for our reasoning: Participants categorized unfamiliar faces according to the most salient categorical dimension available in the visual information (in this case, sex), but did not do so for familiar faces. Implications for models of person perception are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Who or what are you?: Facial orientation and person construal

An extensive literature has documented the cognitive benefits that accrue from a categorical conception of others. While informative, this work has overlooked the fact that, prior to the application of categorical thinking as an economizing cognitive tool, perceivers must first extract category-triggering information from available facial cues. What this suggests is that an impetus to construe others categorically may reside in the perceptual operations that guide the preliminary stages of person understanding. This possibility was explored in three experiments that investigated the effects of stimulus rotation on the efficiency of identity-based and category-based construal. In the first experiment, sex categorization was compared directly to identity-based construal. Subsequent experiments then investigated the efficiency of sex (Experiment 2) and race (Experiment 3) categorization when critical category-specifying facial cues were present and absent. The results demonstrated that categorical responding is driven by the extraction of featural information from faces, a finding that informs recent theoretical accounts of person perception. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A boy primed Sue: feature‐based processing and person construal

Everyday social interaction is often dominated by categorical thinking, with generic group‐based knowledge structures guiding people's dealings with others. Noting the important influence that category‐cueing facial features exert during the initial stages of person construal, the current work explored the effects of hair cues on the process and temporal dynamics of sex categorization. Using a standard priming paradigm to index the products of person construal (i.e., categorical and stereotype‐ based knowledge), the results of three experiments revealed that: (i) hair cues alone are sufficient to trigger category and stereotype activation; and (ii) during the early stages of person perception, these cues have the capacity to reverse conventional priming effects and generate errors of categorical assignment (e.g., female faces prime male knowledge). These findings are considered in the context of contemporary accounts of person construal. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of construal processes in overconfident predictions about the self and others

Overconfident behavioral predictions and trait inferences may occur because people make inadequate allowance for the uncertainties of situational construal. In Studies 1-3, Ss estimated how much time or money they would spend in various hypothetical, incompletely specified situations. Ss then offered associated "confidence limits" under different "construal conditions". In Study 4, Ss made trait inferences about someone they believed had responded "deviantly"--again with situational details unspecified and construal conditions manipulated. In all 4 studies, Ss who made predictions or trait inferences without being able to assume the accuracy of their situational construals offered confidence limits no broader than those of Ss who made their responses contingent on such accuracy. Only in conditions where Ss were obliged to offer alternative construals did they appropriately broaden their confidence limits or weaken their trait inferences.     

Understanding person perception

Bruce and Young's (1986) theoretical framework was actually a synthesis of ideas contributed by several people. Some of its insights have stood the test of time - especially the importance of using converging evidence from as wide a range of methods of enquiry as possible, and an emphasis on understanding the demands that are made by particular face perception tasks. But there were also areas where Bruce and Young failed to obey their own edicts (emotion recognition), and some topics they simply omitted (gaze perception). We discuss these, and then look at how the field has been transformed by computing developments, finishing with a few thoughts about where things may go over the next few (25?) years.     

Processing style and person recognition: Exploring the face inversion effect

It has frequently been reported that recognition performance is impaired when faces are presented in an inverted rather than upright orientation, a phenomenon termed the face inversion effect (FIE). Extending previous work on this topic, the current investigation explored whether individual differences in global precedence—the propensity to process nonfacial stimuli in a configural manner—impacts memory for faces. Based on performance on the Navon letter-classification task, two experimental groups were created that differed in relative global precedence (i.e., strong global precedence [SGP] and weak global precedence [WGP]). In a subsequent face-recognition task, results revealed that while both groups demonstrated a reliable FIE, this effect was attenuated among participants displaying WGP. These findings suggest that individual differences in general processing style modulate face recognition.     

Integrating face and voice in person perception

Integration of information from face and voice plays a central role in our social interactions. It has been mostly studied in the context of audiovisual speech perception: integration of affective or identity information has received comparatively little scientific attention. Here, we review behavioural and neuroimaging studies of face-voice integration in the context of person perception. Clear evidence for interference between facial and vocal information has been observed during affect recognition or identity processing. Integration effects on cerebral activity are apparent both at the level of heteromodal cortical regions of convergence, particularly bilateral posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), and at 'unimodal' levels of sensory processing. Whether the latter reflects feedback mechanisms or direct crosstalk between auditory and visual cortices is as yet unclear.     

The face and person perception: insights from social cognition

Social-cognitive investigations of face perception have tended to be motivated by different goals than cognitive and neuropsychological studies-namely, to understand the dynamics of social categorization rather than identity recognition-and the result has been a lack of cross-pollination of insights and ideas between the disciplines. We review the evidence from social cognition, with an eye to discussing how this work aligns with the Bruce and Young (1986) model of face recognition. Acknowledging the invaluable impact the model has exerted on our understanding of face recognition, we suggest that considering the bottom-up constraints of visual processing and the top-down influences of semantic knowledge will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of face perception.     

Understanding others,reciprocity, and self-consciousness

The article explores the basic conceptual relationship between social cognition, intersubjectivity and self-consciousness. A much-debated recent approach to social cognition, the so-called interaction theory, is the view that the ability to perceive, understand and interpret the behavior of others relies on interaction in the sense of mutual coordination of the embodied agents involved. It will be shown that this notion of reciprocity is too weak in order to fully account for social understanding. It will be argued that the idea of reciprocity should at least in some cases be conceived of as a stance persons adopt towards each other, which in turn presupposes that they acknowledge each other as self-conscious agents. This view is inspired by an argument originally introduced by Johann Gottlieb Fichte.     

A face with a cue: exploring the inevitability of person categorization

Recent research has explored the dynamics of categorical thinking, with debate centering on the putative automaticity of this process. In a further investigation of this topic, the current inquiry assessed the influence of critical category‐cueing facial features on overt (i.e., category identification) and covert (i.e., category priming) measures of sex categorization. The results revealed that when a critical sex‐specifying facial cue (i.e., hairstyle) was present, priming effects emerged even under suboptimal processing conditions (i.e., facial blurring). When this cue was absent, however, priming no longer occurred. Interestingly, category identification was largely unimpeded by feature removal or facial blurring. Taken together, these results underscore the efficiency of categorical thinking and the importance of task objectives and feature‐based processing in person perception. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding others by doing things together: an enactive account

Enactivists claim that social cognition is constituted by interactive processes and even more radically that there is ‘no observation without interaction’. Nevertheless, the notion of interaction at the core of the account has not yet being characterized in a way that makes good the claim that interactions actually constitute social understanding rather than merely facilitating or causally contributing to it. This paper seeks to complement the enactivist approach by offering an account of basic joint action that involves and brings with it basic forms of mental understanding. The paper turns to theories of joint action rather than theories of perception as some enactivists have done (cfr. Gallagher in Conscious Cognit 17(2):535–543, 2008; Thompson in J Conscious Stud 8(5–7):1–32, 2001), to gain insight into the kind of interactions that underpin our understanding of other minds, and in that way, supplement the interactionist-enactive account. In line with Enactivism, the paper argues that this kind of social understanding is practical rather than theoretical and that it is cognitively more basic and developmentally prior when compared to other ways we come to understand other minds.

     

Go with the flow: conforming to others in the face of existential threat

In three studies we investigate the impact of mortality salience on conformity and show that people have a greater preference to conform to the opinions of others when mortality is salient. Study 1 shows that mortality salience increases the degree to which judgments of abstract drawings are influenced by the majority's opinion. Study 2 shows that mortality salience causes people to change their opinions towards societal issues, so that these fit the attitudes they think others have. Study 3 replicates the findings of the first study and additionally shows that people do not conform to the attitude of outgroup members. Our findings extend previous Terror Management Theory research and suggest that conforming to the group is a means to buffer the fear that may otherwise arise in existentially threatening situations. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Motivated level of construal: How temperature affects the construal level of state-relevant stimuli

Motivation and Emotion - Motivation affects perception, for example when people overestimate the psychological proximity of goal-relevant objects. Additionally, proximity maps onto more concrete...     

The acceptance of lonely others: effects of loneliness and gender of the target person and loneliness of the perceiver

The reactions of lonely people toward other lonely people and the relationship between loneliness and self-concepts were examined. The 2-way and 3-way interaction effects showed that low lonely perceivers reacted more negatively toward the lonely target person. The relationship between loneliness and self-concept was examined using a multidimensional measure of self-concept. Results showed that loneliness correlated negatively with self-concept. In multiple regression analyses, the most significant predictors of loneliness were self-concept of relations with same gender and opposite gender peers and general self-concept.     

Effects of the presence of others on prosocial behavior: Perceived face as mediator

Previous studies have shown that the prosocial behavior of individuals may be promoted or inhibited by the presence of others. This study hypothesizes that prosocial behavior relates to the relationships among present individuals, beyond their number. This study examines whether there is a significant difference in an individual's prosocial behavior in the presence of different types of others (strangers or friends) and whether this effect is mediated by the perception of face. Two studies that used different methods of data collection were conducted. It was found that the presence of friends promotes prosocial behavior more than does the presence of strangers. In addition, perceived face plays a mediating role between the presence of different types of people and prosocial behavior.     

What emotional reactions can tell us about the nature of others: An appraisal perspective on person perception

The present research aimed to assess how people use knowledge about the emotional reactions of others to make inferences about their character. Specifically, we postulate that people can reconstruct or “reverse engineer” the appraisals underlying an emotional reaction and use this appraisal information to draw person perception inferences. As predicted, a person who reacted with anger to blame was perceived as more aggressive, and self-confident, but also as less warm and gentle than a person who reacted with sadness (Study 1). A person who reacted with a smile (Study 1) or remained neutral (Study 2) was perceived as self-confident but also as unemotional. These perceptions were mediated by perceived appraisals.     

Understanding person acquisition using an interactive activation and competition network

Face perception is one of the most developed visual skills that humans display, and recent work has attempted to examine the mechanisms involved in face perception through noting how neural networks achieve the same performance. The purpose of the present paper is to extend this approach to look not just at human face recognition, but also at human face acquisition. Experiment 1 presents empirical data to describe the acquisition over time of appropriate representations for newly encountered faces. These results are compared with those of Simulation 1, in which a modified IAC network capable of modelling the acquisition process is generated. Experiment 2 and Simulation 2 explore the mechanisms of learning further, and it is demonstrated that the acquisition of a set of associated new facts is easier than the acquisition of individual facts in isolation of one another. This is explained in terms of the advantage gained from additional inputs and mutual reinforcement of developing links within an interactive neural network system.