Emergent Research in Social Vision: An Integrated Approach to the Determinants and Consequences of Social Categorization

Testosterone, gender identity and gender-stereotyped personality attributes

Sex/gender differences in personality associated with gender stereotyped behavior are widely studied in psychology yet remain a subject of ongoing debate. Exposure to testosterone during developmental periods is considered to be a primary mediator of many sex/gender differences in behavior. Extensions of this research has led to both lay beliefs and initial research about individual differences in basal testosterone in adulthood relating to "masculine" personality. In this study, we explored the relationships between testosterone, gender identity, and gender stereotyped personality attributes in a sample of over 400 university students (65 % female assigned at birth). Participants provided ratings of their self-perceived masculinity and femininity, resulting in a continuous measure of gender identity, and a set of agentic and communal personality attributes. A saliva sample was also provided for assay of basal testosterone. Results showed no compelling evidence that basal testosterone correlates with gender-stereotyped personality attributes or explains the relationship between sex/gender identity and these attributes, across, within, or covarying out sex assigned at birth. Contributing to a more gender diverse approach to assessing sex/gender relationships with personality and testosterone, our continuous measure of self-perceived masculinity and femininity predicted additional variance in personality beyond binary sex and showed some preliminary but weak relationships with testosterone. Results from this study cast doubt on the activational testosterone-masculinity hypothesis for explaining sex differences in gender stereotyped traits and within-sex/gender variation in attributes associated with agency and communality.

Gender-Ambiguous Voices and Social Disfluency

Recently, gender-ambiguous (nonbinary) voices have been added to voice assistants to combat gender stereotypes and foster inclusion. However, if people react negatively to such voices, these laudable efforts may be counterproductive. In five preregistered studies (N = 3,684 adult participants) we found that people do react negatively, rating products described by narrators with gender-ambiguous voices less favorably than when they are described by clearly male or female narrators. The voices create a feeling of unease, or social disfluency, that affects evaluations of the products being described. These effects are best explained by low familiarity with voices that sound ambiguous. Thus, initial negative reactions can be overcome with more exposure.

Gay and Straight Men Prefer Masculine-Presenting Gay Men for a High-Status Role: Evidence From an Ecologically Valid Experiment

There is increased acceptance of gay men in most Western societies. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that feminine-presenting gay men are still disadvantaged compared to gay men who present in a more traditionally masculine way. Though gay men themselves may be complicit in perpetuating this bias, studies that demonstrate this possibility are scant. Whereas most studies on perceptions of feminine-presenting gay men have manipulated gender nonconformity via written descriptions, research suggests that behavioural cues such as voice and body-language can mitigate or exacerbate prejudice toward a stereotyped individual. In the current study, audio-visual stimuli were created to investigate how masculine versus feminine behaviour would impact status endowment from other gay and heterosexual men. In total, 256 men (Mage = 42.73, SD = 14.48: half gay; half heterosexual) cast, from a selection of six video-taped candidates, one gay man to play a lead role in a purported ad for a tourism campaign. In the videos, the actors delivered a script related to the tourism campaign in a manner where their voice and body-language was manipulated to come across as either masculine or feminine-presenting. Findings indicated that gay and heterosexual participants showed a significant preference for the masculine videoclips. For heterosexual men, the preference for masculine-presenting actors was predicted by greater anti-gay sentiment, whereas internalised anti-gay prejudice did not predict a preference for masculine-presentation among gay men. Implications of the findings for discourse and education on intraminority prejudice and suggestions for future research are offered.

Feminist Social Vision: Seeing Through the Lens of Marginalized Perceivers

Social vision research, which examines, in part, how humans visually perceive social stimuli, is well-positioned to improve understandings of social inequality. However, social vision research has rarely prioritized the perspectives of marginalized group members. We offer a theoretical argument for diversifying understandings of social perceptual processes by centering marginalized perspectives. We examine (a) how social vision researchers frame their research questions and who these framings prioritize and (b) how perceptual processes (person perception; people perception; perception of social objects) are linked to group membership and thus comprehensively understanding these processes necessitates attention to marginalized perceivers. We discuss how social vision research translates into theoretical advances and to action for reducing negative intergroup consequences (e.g., prejudice). The purpose of this article is to delineate how prioritizing marginalized perspectives in social vision research could develop novel questions, bridge theoretical gaps, and elevate social vision's translational impact to improve outcomes for marginalized groups.

Impact of similarity on recognition of faces of Black and White targets

One reason for the persistence of racial inequality may be anticipated dissimilarity with racial outgroups. In the present research, we explored the impact of perceived similarity with White and Black targets on facial identity recognition accuracy. In two studies, participants first completed an ostensible personality survey. Next, in a Learning Phase, Black and White faces were presented on one of three background colours. Participants were led to believe that these colours indicated similarities between them and the target person in the image. Specifically, they were informed that the background colours were associated with the extent to which responses by the target person on the personality survey and their own responses overlapped. In actual fact, faces were randomly assigned to colour. In both studies, non-Black participants (Experiment 1) and White participants (Experiment 2) showed better recognition of White than Black faces. More importantly in the present context, a positive linear effect of similarity was found in both studies, with better recognition of increasingly similar Black and White targets. The independent effects for race of target and similarity, with no interaction, indicated that participants responded to Black and White faces according to category membership as well as on an interpersonal level related to similarity with specific targets. Together these findings suggest that while perceived similarity may enhance identity recognition accuracy for Black and White faces, it may not reduce differences in facial memory for these racial categories.

Person Perception, Meet People Perception: Exploring the Social Vision of Groups

Groups, teams, and collectives-people-are incredibly important to human behavior. People live in families, work in teams, and celebrate and mourn together in groups. Despite the huge variety of human group activity and its fundamental importance to human life, social-psychological research on person perception has overwhelmingly focused on its namesake, the person, rather than expanding to consider people perception. By looking to two unexpected partners, the vision sciences and organization behavior, we find emerging work that presents a path forward, building a foundation for understanding how people perceive other people. And yet this nascent field is missing critical insights that scholars of social vision might offer: specifically, for example, the chance to connect perception to behavior through the mediators of cognition and motivational processes. Here, we review emerging work across the vision and social sciences to extract core principles of people perception: efficiency, capacity, and complexity. We then consider complexity in more detail, focusing on how people perception modifies person-perception processes and enables the perception of group emergent properties as well as group dynamics. Finally, we use these principles to discuss findings and outline areas fruitful for future work. We hope that fellow scholars take up this people-perception call.

Impact of perceived interpersonal similarity on attention to the eyes of same-race and other-race faces

One reason for the persistence of racial discrimination may be anticipated dissimilarity with racial outgroup members that prevent meaningful interactions. In the present research, we investigated whether perceived similarity would impact the processing of same-race and other-race faces. Specifically, in two experiments, we varied the extent to which White participants were ostensibly similar to targets via bogus feedback on a personality test. With an eye tracker, we measured the effect of this manipulation on attention to the eyes, a critical region for person perception and face memory. In Experiment 1, we monitored the impact of perceived interpersonal similarity on White participants’ attention to the eyes of same-race White targets. In Experiment 2, we replicated this procedure, but White participants were presented with either same-race White targets or other-race Black targets in a between-subjects design. The pattern of results in both experiments indicated a positive linear effect of similarity—greater perceived similarity between participants and targets predicted more attention to the eyes of White and Black faces. The implications of these findings related to top-down effects of perceived similarity for our understanding of basic processes in face perception, as well as intergroup relations, are discussed.

Fusiform Activity Distinguishes Between Subjects With Low and High Xenophobic Attitudes Toward Refugees

This study analyzes how people's attitudes to the European refugee crisis (ERC) correspond to selected psychological state and trait measures and impact the neural processing of media images of refugees. From a large pool of respondents, who filled in an online xenophobia questionnaire, we selected two groups (total N = 38) with the same socio-demographic background, but with opposite attitudes toward refugees. We found that a negative attitude toward refugees (high xenophobia - HX) was associated with a significantly higher conscientiousness score and with a higher trait aggression and hostility, but there was no group effect connected with empathy, fear, and anxiety measures. At the neural level we found that brain activity during the presentation of ERC stimuli is affected by xenophobic attitudes—with more xenophobic subjects exhibiting a higher BOLD response in the left fusiform gyrus. However, while the fMRI results demonstrate increased attention and vigilance toward ERC-related stimuli in the HX group, they do not show differentiated patterns of brain activity associated with perception of dehumanized outgroup.

Dynamic interactive theory as a domain-general account of social perception

The perception of social categories, emotions, and personality traits from others' faces each have been studied extensively but in relative isolation. We synthesize emerging findings suggesting that, in each of these domains of social perception, both a variety of bottom-up facial features and top-down social cognitive processes play a part in driving initial perceptions. Among such top-down processes, social-conceptual knowledge in particular can have a fundamental structuring role in how we perceive others' faces. Extending the Dynamic Interactive framework (Freeman & Ambady, 2011), we outline a perspective whereby the perception of social categories, emotions, and traits from faces can all be conceived as emerging from an integrated system relying on domain-general cognitive properties. Such an account of social perception would envision perceptions to be a rapid, but gradual, process of negotiation between the variety of visual cues inherent to a person and the social cognitive knowledge an individual perceiver brings to the perceptual process. We describe growing evidence in support of this perspective as well as its theoretical implications for social psychology.

Placing Racial Classification in Context

This article extends previous research on place-based patterns of racial categorization by linking it to sociological theory that posits subnational variation in cultural schemas and applying regression techniques that allow for spatial variation in model estimates. We use data from a U.S. restricted-use geocoded longitudinal survey to predict racial classification as a function of both individual and county characteristics. We first estimate national average associations, then turn to spatial-regime models and geographically weighted regression to explore how these relationships vary across the country. We find that individual characteristics matter most for classification as "Black," while contextual characteristics are important predictors of classification as "White" or "Other," but some predictors also vary across space, as expected. These results affirm the importance of place in defining racial boundaries and suggest that U.S. racial schemas operate at different spatial scales, with some being national in scope while others are more locally situated.

Threat in the Company of Men: Ensemble Perception and Threat Evaluations of Groups Varying in Sex Ratio

Everyday, we visually perceive people not only in isolation but also in groups. Yet, visual person perception research typically focuses on inferences made about isolated individuals. By integrating social vision and visual ensemble coding, we present novel evidence that (a) perceivers rapidly (500 ms) extract a group’s ratio of men to women and (b) both explicit judgments of threat and indirect evaluative priming of threat increase as the ratio of men to women in a group increases. Furthermore, participants’ estimates of the number of men, and not perceived men’s coalition, mediate the relationship between the ratio of men to women and threat judgments. These findings demonstrate the remarkable efficiency of perceiving a group’s sex ratio and downstream evaluative inferences made from these percepts. Overall, this work advances person perception research into the novel domain of people perception, revealing how the visually perceived sex ratio of groups impacts social judgments.

Gay- and Lesbian-Sounding Auditory Cues Elicit Stereotyping and Discrimination

The growing body of literature on the recognition of sexual orientation from voice ("auditory gaydar") is silent on the cognitive and social consequences of having a gay-/lesbian- versus heterosexual-sounding voice. We investigated this issue in four studies (overall N = 276), conducted in Italian language, in which heterosexual listeners were exposed to single-sentence voice samples of gay/lesbian and heterosexual speakers. In all four studies, listeners were found to make gender-typical inferences about traits and preferences of heterosexual speakers, but gender-atypical inferences about those of gay or lesbian speakers. Behavioral intention measures showed that listeners considered lesbian and gay speakers as less suitable for a leadership position, and male (but not female) listeners took distance from gay speakers. Together, this research demonstrates that having a gay/lesbian rather than heterosexual-sounding voice has tangible consequences for stereotyping and discrimination.

More Than Meets the Eye: Split-Second Social Perception

Recent research suggests that visual perception of social categories is shaped not only by facial features but also by higher-order social cognitive processes (e.g., stereotypes, attitudes, goals). Building on neural computational models of social perception, we outline a perspective of how multiple bottom-up visual cues are flexibly integrated with a range of top-down processes to form perceptions, and we identify a set of key brain regions involved. During this integration, 'hidden' social category activations are often triggered which temporarily impact perception without manifesting in explicit perceptual judgments. Importantly, these hidden impacts and other aspects of the perceptual process predict downstream social consequences - from politicians' electoral success to several evaluative biases - independently of the outcomes of that process.

Body selectivity in occipitotemporal cortex: Causal evidence

Perception of others' bodies provides information that is useful for a number of important social-cognitive processes. Evidence from neuroimaging methods has identified focal cortical regions that are highly selective for perceiving bodies and body parts, including the extrastriate body area (EBA) and fusiform body area (FBA). Our understanding of the functional properties of these regions, and their causal contributions to behavior, has benefitted from the study of neuropsychological patients and particularly from investigations using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). We review this evidence, focusing on TMS studies that are revealing of how (and when) activity in EBA contributes to detecting people in natural scenes; to resolving their body shape, movements, actions, individual parts, and identities; and to guiding goal-directed behavior. These findings are considered in reference to a framework for body perception in which the patterns of neural activity in EBA and FBA jointly serve to make explicit the elements of the visual scene that correspond to the body and its parts. These representations are modulated by other sources of information such as prior knowledge, and are shared with wider brain networks involved in many aspects of social cognition.