Cultural differences in the primacy effect for person perception

Previous work has shown there are robust differences in how North Americans and East Asians form impressions of people. The present research examines whether the tendency to weigh initial information more heavily—the primacy effect—may be another component of these cultural differences. Specifically, we tested whether Americans would be more likely to use first impressions to guide person perception, compared to Japanese participants. In this experiment, participants read a vignette that described a target person's behaviour, then rated the target's personality. Before reading the vignette, some trait information was given to create an expectation about the target's personality. The data revealed that Americans used this initial information to guide their judgments of the target, whereas the Japanese sample based their judgments on all the information more evenly. Thus, Americans showed a stronger primacy effect in their impression formation than Japanese participants, who engaged in more data‐driven processing.     

Forming first impressions: The role of gender and normative accuracy in personality perception

Gender is associated with interpersonal sensitivity across different domains, with females, on average, demonstrating higher levels of interpersonal sensitivity than males. What underlies these gender differences in the accuracy of first impressions of personality remains unclear. Across two large video studies and a large round-robin design, perceivers’ gender was related to the accuracy of general personality trait impressions. Specifically, female perceivers achieved higher levels of accuracy, but only with respect to normative accuracy or perceiving what others are like in general. There were no significant gender differences in terms of distinctive accuracy or perceiving how others are different from the average person. Discussion considers how these findings relate to previously established gender differences in other domains of interpersonal sensitivity.     

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.     

Context and Perceptual Salience Influence the Formation of Novel Stereotypes via Cumulative Cultural Evolution

We use a transmission chain method to establish how context and category salience influence the formation of novel stereotypes through cumulative cultural evolution. We created novel alien targets by combining features from three category dimensions—color, movement, and shape—thereby creating social targets that were individually unique but that also shared category membership with other aliens (e.g., two aliens might be the same color and shape but move differently). At the start of the transmission chains each alien was randomly assigned attributes that described it (e.g., arrogant, caring, confident). Participants were given training on the alien‐attribute assignments and were then tested on their memory for these. The alien‐attribute assignments participants produced during test were used as the training materials for the next participant in the transmission chain. As information was repeatedly transmitted an increasingly simplified, learnable stereotype‐like structure emerged for targets who shared the same color, such that by the end of the chains targets who shared the same color were more likely to share the same attributes (a reanalysis of data from Martin et al., 2014 which we term Experiment 1). The apparent bias toward the formation of novel stereotypes around the color category dimension was also found for objects (Experiment 2). However, when the category dimension of color was made less salient, it no longer dominated the formation of novel stereotypes (Experiment 3). The current findings suggest that context and category salience influence category dimension salience, which in turn influences the cumulative cultural evolution of information.     

On being liked on the web and in the “real world”: Consistency in first impressions across personal webpages and spontaneous behavior

With recent growth in the use of personal webpages and online social networking, people are changing the way that they meet and form impressions of each other. The current research examines the correspondence in impressions formed from face-to-face interaction and personal webpages. As expected, people liked by interaction partners were also liked on the basis of their Facebook^® pages. Across the two social mediums, social perceivers utilized analogous criteria in forming impressions: interaction partners and webpage viewers liked people who were socially expressive in face-to-face interaction and personal webpages, respectively. Finally, webpage expressivity and webpage self-disclosure were independent constructs, predictive of face-to-face counterparts: nonverbal expressivity and verbal self-disclosure. Implications for the changing landscape of social perception are discussed.     

On how we perceive the social world. Criticizing Gallagher's view on direct perception and outlining an alternative

Criticizing Gallagher’s view on direct perception, I develop a basic model of social perception. According to the Cartesians another person’s intentions (and similar properties) are not directly accessible to an observer. According to the cognitivist Cartesians (quasi-)conscious processes are necessary for social understanding. According to the Anti-Cartesians (Gallagher’s view) social perception is direct. Since both of these latter approaches face serious problems, I will argue in favor of an alternative: anti-cognitivist Cartesianism. Distinguishing between an active- and a passive part of the perceptual system we can describe the situation as follows: Some functionally individuated parts of our nervous system generate percepts that correspond to the properties that causally trigger the system, whilst others form percepts of properties that do not causally trigger the system. The model is basic in that it merely helps clarifying some of the fundamental concepts we need in order to describe empirical findings.     

The world in black and white: Ostracism enhances the categorical perception of social information

In two experiments, ostracized individuals showed more pronounced categorical perception of inclusion- and exclusion-related stimuli. Specifically, ostracism enhanced the ability to distinguish between-category differences (e.g., between happy and angry faces) relative to within-category differences (e.g., between two happy expressions). Participants were socially included or excluded via Cyberball (a virtual ball-tossing task). In Experiment 1, ostracized participants showed greater perceptual acuity in distinguishing between subtly happy and angry expressions combined with a reduced ability to discriminate expressions within each expression category. Experiment 2 found analogous categorical perception effects for targets varying on the dimension of race. Importantly, this effect was specific to social information; categorical perception of non-social objects was not qualified by social exclusion. These results suggest that ostracism exacerbates categorical perception, attuning perceivers to the differences between various inclusion- and exclusion-related categories relative to within category acuity, making the world appear more ‘black-and-white’ than it might otherwise.     

Confidence of social judgments is not just error: Individual differences in the structure,stability, and social functions of perceptual confidence

The present research uses a Social Relations Model approach to focus on individual differences in perceptual confidence – a person’s confidence in her or his impressions of others. Across two samples of group interactions, we found that the majority of variance in perceptual confidence was explained by individual differences in how people tended to perceive others (i.e., perceiver effects). A smaller percentage of variance was explained by differences in how people tended to be perceived by others (i.e., target effects). Both these individual differences were stable over time, were related to relevant personality measures, and group outcomes. Together, these results demonstrate that although perceptual confidence may not be substantially related to accuracy, it exists as a stable individual difference dimension that has important consequences for social interactions.