Meta-lay theories of scientific potential drive underrepresented students' sense of belonging to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

The current research investigates people's perceptions of others' lay theories (or mindsets), an understudied construct that we call meta-lay theories. Six studies examine whether underrepresented students' meta-lay theories influence their sense of belonging to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The studies tested whether underrepresented students who perceive their faculty as believing most students have high scientific aptitude (a universal metatheory) would report a stronger sense of belonging to STEM than those who think their faculty believe that not everyone has high scientific aptitude (a nonuniversal metatheory). Women PhD candidates in STEM fields who held universal rather than nonuniversal metatheories felt greater sense of belonging to their field, both when metatheories were measured (Study 1) and manipulated (Study 2). Undergraduates who held more universal metatheories reported a higher sense of belonging to STEM (Studies 3 and 4) and earned higher final course grades (Study 3). Experimental manipulations depicting a professor communicating the universal lay theory eliminated the difference between African American and European American students' attraction to a STEM course (Study 5) and between women and men's sense of belonging to STEM (Study 6). Mini meta-analyses indicated that the universal metatheory increases underrepresented students' sense of belonging to STEM, reduces the extent of social identity threat they experience, and reduces their perception of faculty as endorsing stereotypes. Across different underrepresented groups, types of institutions, areas of STEM, and points in the STEM pipeline, students' metaperceptions of faculty's lay theories about scientific aptitude influence their sense of belonging to STEM. (PsycINFO Database Record

Trusting outgroup, but not ingroup members, requires control: neural and behavioral evidence.

Trust and cooperation often break down across group boundaries, contributing to pernicious consequences, from polarized political structures to intractable conflict. As such, addressing such conflicts require first understanding why trust is reduced in intergroup settings. Here, we clarify the structure of intergroup trust using neuroscientific and behavioral methods. We found that trusting ingroup members produced activity in brain areas associated with reward, whereas trusting outgroup members produced activity in areas associated with top-down control. Behaviorally, time pressure-which reduces people's ability to exert control-reduced individuals' trust in outgroup, but not ingroup members. These data suggest that the exertion of control can help recover trust in intergroup settings, offering potential avenues for reducing intergroup failures in trust and the consequences of these failures.

Motivation alters impression formation and related neural systems.

Observers frequently form impressions of other people based on complex or conflicting information. Rather than being objective, these impressions are often biased by observers' motives. For instance, observers often downplay negative information they learn about ingroup members. Here, we characterize the neural systems associated with biased impression formation. Participants learned positive and negative information about ingroup and outgroup social targets. Following this information, participants worsened their impressions of outgroup, but not ingroup, targets. This tendency was associated with a failure to engage neural structures including lateral prefrontal cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, temporoparietal junction, Insula and Precuneus when processing negative information about ingroup (but not outgroup) targets. To the extent that participants engaged these regions while learning negative information about ingroup members, they exhibited less ingroup bias in their impressions. These data are consistent with a model of 'effortless bias', under which perceivers fail to process goal-inconsistent information in order to maintain desired conclusions.

Subtle perceptions of male sexual orientation influence occupational opportunities.

Theories linking the literatures on stereotyping and human resource management have proposed that individuals may enjoy greater success obtaining jobs congruent with stereotypes about their social categories or traits. Here, we explored such effects for a detectable, but not obvious, social group distinction: male sexual orientation. Bridging previous work on prejudice and occupational success with that on social perception, we found that perceivers rated gay and straight men as more suited to professions consistent with stereotypes about their groups (nurses, pediatricians, and English teachers vs. engineers, managers, surgeons, and math teachers) from mere photos of their faces. Notably, distinct evaluations of the gay and straight men emerged based on perceptions of their faces with no explicit indication of sexual orientation. Neither perceivers' expertise with hiring decisions nor diagnostic information about the targets eliminated these biases, but encouraging fair decisions did contribute to partly ameliorating the differences. Mediation analysis further showed that perceptions of the targets' sexual orientations and facial affect accounted for these effects. Individuals may therefore infer characteristics about individuals' group memberships from their faces and use this information in a way that meaningfully influences evaluations of their suitability for particular jobs. (PsycINFO Database Record

Perceptions of variability in facial emotion influence beliefs about the stability of psychological characteristics.

Beliefs about the malleability versus stability of traits (incremental vs. entity lay theories) have a profound impact on social cognition and self-regulation, shaping phenomena that range from the fundamental attribution error and group-based stereotyping to academic motivation and achievement. Less is known about the causes than the effects of these lay theories, and in the current work the authors examine the perception of facial emotion as a causal influence on lay theories. Specifically, they hypothesized that (a) within-person variability in facial emotion signals within-person variability in traits and (b) social environments replete with within-person variability in facial emotion encourage perceivers to endorse incremental lay theories. Consistent with Hypothesis 1, Study 1 participants were more likely to attribute dynamic (vs. stable) traits to a person who exhibited several different facial emotions than to a person who exhibited a single facial emotion across multiple images. Hypothesis 2 suggests that social environments support incremental lay theories to the extent that they include many people who exhibit within-person variability in facial emotion. Consistent with Hypothesis 2, participants in Studies 2-4 were more likely to endorse incremental theories of personality, intelligence, and morality after exposure to multiple individuals exhibiting within-person variability in facial emotion than after exposure to multiple individuals exhibiting a single emotion several times. Perceptions of within-person variability in facial emotion-rather than perceptions of simple diversity in facial emotion-were responsible for these effects. Discussion focuses on how social ecologies shape lay theories. (PsycINFO Database Record

The dissociable effects of stereotype threat on older adults' memory encoding and retrieval.

The present study asks how subliminal exposure to negative stereotypes about age-related memory deficits affects older adults' memory performance. Whereas prior research has focused on the effect of "stereotype threat" on older adults' memory for neutral material, the present study additionally examines the effect on memory for positive and negative words, as well as whether the subliminal "threat" has a larger impact on memory performance when it occurs prior to encoding or prior to retrieval (as compared to a control condition). Results revealed that older adults' memory impairments were most pronounced when the threat was placed prior to retrieval as compared to when the threat was placed prior to encoding or no threat occurred. Moreover, the threat specifically increased false memory rates, particularly for neutral items compared to positive and negative ones. These results emphasize that stereotype threat effects vary depending upon the phase of memory it impacts.

Power Heightens Sensitivity to Unfairness Against the Self.

Power is accompanied by a sense of entitlement, which shapes reactions to self-relevant injustices. We propose that powerful people more strongly expect to be treated fairly and are faster to perceive unjust treatment that violates these expectations. After preliminary data demonstrated that power leads people to expect fair outcomes for themselves, we conducted four experiments. Participants primed with high (vs. low) power were faster to identify violations of distributive justice in which they were victims (Study 1). This effect was specific to self-relevant injustices (Study 2) and generalized to violations of interpersonal justice (Study 3). Finally, participants primed with high power were more likely to take action against unfair treatment (Study 4). These findings suggest a process by which hierarchies may be maintained: Whereas the powerless are comparatively less sensitive to unfair treatment, the powerful may retain their social standing by quickly perceiving and responding to self-relevant injustices.

Cognition from on high and down low: Verticality and construal level.

Across 7 studies, the authors examined the relationship between experiences of verticality and abstract versus concrete processing. Experiencing high, relative to low, verticality led to higher level identifications for actions (Study 1), greater willingness to delay short-term monetary gains for larger long-term monetary gains (Studies 2 and 5), and more frequent perceptions of meaningful relationships between objects and categories (Studies 3, 4, and 6), demonstrating that high verticality leads to more high-level construals. Mechanisms of these effects were explored, and the studies present evidence suggesting that mood (Studies 3 and 4), felt power (Study 4), arousal (Study 4), perceptual scope (Study 4), superficial semantic associations (Study 5), and movement (Study 5) do not mediate these effects. Instead, we found that even minimal experiences of verticality influence construal level (Study 6) and that verticality can influence construal level independent of the many plausible mediators. Furthermore, the relationship is reciprocal with abstract and concrete processing influencing the verticality of one's visual perspective (Study 7), suggesting an intimate link between construal level (abstract vs. concrete processing) and experiences of verticality.

The neural basis of contextual influences on face categorization.

From only brief exposure to a face, individuals spontaneously categorize another's race. Recent behavioral evidence suggests that visual context may affect such categorizations. We used fMRI to examine the neural basis of contextual influences on the race categorization of faces. Participants categorized the race of faces that varied along a White-Asian morph continuum and were surrounded by American, neutral, or Chinese scene contexts. As expected, the context systematically influenced categorization responses and their efficiency (response times). Neuroimaging results indicated that the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) exhibited highly sensitive, graded responses to the compatibility of facial and contextual cues. These regions showed linearly increasing responses as a face became more White when in an American context, and linearly increasing responses as a face became more Asian when in a Chinese context. Further, RSC activity partially mediated the effect of this face-context compatibility on the efficiency of categorization responses. Together, the findings suggest a critical role of the RSC and OFC in driving contextual influences on face categorization, and highlight the impact of extraneous cues beyond the face in categorizing other people.

Does aging impair first impression accuracy? Differentiating emotion recognition from complex social inferences.

Young adults can be surprisingly accurate at making inferences about people from their faces. Although these first impressions have important consequences for both the perceiver and the target, it remains an open question whether first impression accuracy is preserved with age. Specifically, could age differences in impressions toward others stem from age-related deficits in accurately detecting complex social cues? Research on aging and impression formation suggests that young and older adults show relative consensus in their first impressions, but it is unknown whether they differ in accuracy. It has been widely shown that aging disrupts emotion recognition accuracy, and that these impairments may predict deficits in other social judgments, such as detecting deceit. However, it is unclear whether general impression formation accuracy (e.g., emotion recognition accuracy, detecting complex social cues) relies on similar or distinct mechanisms. It is important to examine this question to evaluate how, if at all, aging might affect overall accuracy. Here, we examined whether aging impaired first impression accuracy in predicting real-world outcomes and categorizing social group membership. Specifically, we studied whether emotion recognition accuracy and age-related cognitive decline (which has been implicated in exacerbating deficits in emotion recognition) predict first impression accuracy. Our results revealed that emotion recognition accuracy did not predict first impression accuracy, nor did age-related cognitive decline impair it. These findings suggest that domains of social perception outside of emotion recognition may rely on mechanisms that are relatively unimpaired by aging.

Group-based discrimination in judgments of moral purity-related behaviors: experimental and archival evidence.

Knowledge of individuals' group membership can alter moral judgments of their behavior. We found that such moral judgments were amplified when judgers learned that a person belonged to a group shown to elicit disgust in others. When a person was labeled as obese, a hippie, or "trailer trash," people judged that person's behavior differently than when such descriptors were omitted: Virtuous behaviors were more highly praised, and moral violations were more severely criticized. Such group-based discrimination in moral judgment was specific to the domain of moral purity. Members of disgust-eliciting groups but not members of other minorities were the target of harsh judgments for purity violations (e.g., lewd behavior) but not for other violations (e.g., refusing to help others). The same pattern held true for virtuous behaviors, so that members of disgust-eliciting groups were more highly praised than others but only in the purity domain. Furthermore, group-based discrimination was mediated by feelings of disgust toward the target group but not by other emotions. Last, analysis of New York Police Department officers' encounters with suspected criminals revealed a similar pattern to that found in laboratory experiments. Police officers were increasingly likely to make an arrest or issue a summons as body mass index increased (i.e., as obesity rose) among people suspected of purity crimes (e.g., prostitution) but not of other crimes (e.g., burglary). Thus, moral judgments in the lab and in the real world exhibit patterns of discrimination that are both group and behavior specific.

Monoracial and biracial children: effects of racial identity saliency on social learning and social preferences.

Children prefer learning from, and affiliating with, their racial in-group but those preferences may vary for biracial children. Monoracial (White, Black, Asian) and biracial (Black/White, Asian/White) children (N = 246, 3-8 years) had their racial identity primed. In a learning preferences task, participants determined the function of a novel object after watching adults (White, Black, and Asian) demonstrate its uses. In the social preferences task, participants saw pairs of children (White, Black, and Asian) and chose with whom they most wanted to socially affiliate. Biracial children showed flexibility in racial identification during learning and social tasks. However, minority-primed biracial children were not more likely than monoracial minorities to socially affiliate with primed racial in-group members, indicating their in-group preferences are contextually based.

Thin-slice judgments in the clinical context.

Clinicians make a variety of assessments about their clients, from judging personality traits to making diagnoses, and a variety of methods are available to do so, ranging from observations to structured interviews. A large body of work demonstrates that from a brief glimpse of another's nonverbal behavior, a variety of traits and inner states can be accurately perceived. Additionally, from these "thin slices" of behavior, even future outcomes can be predicted with some accuracy. Certain clinical disorders such as Parkinson's disease and facial paralysis disrupt nonverbal behavior and may impair clinicians' ability to make accurate judgments. In certain contexts, personality disorders, anxiety, depression, and suicide attempts and outcomes can be detected from others' nonverbal behavior. Additionally, thin slices can predict psychological adjustment to divorce, bereavement, sexual abuse, and well-being throughout life. Thus, for certain traits and disorders, judgments from a thin slice could provide a complementary tool for the clinician's toolbox.

Investigating the early stages of person perception: the asymmetry of social categorization by sex vs. age.

Early perceptual operations are central components of the dynamics of social categorization. The wealth of information provided by facial cues presents challenges to our understanding of these early stages of person perception. The current study aimed to uncover the dynamics of processing multiply categorizable faces, notably as a function of their gender and age. Using a modified four-choice version of a mouse-tracking paradigm (which assesses the relative dominance of two categorical dimensions), the relative influence that sex and age have on each other during categorization of infant, younger adult, and older adult faces was investigated. Results of these experiments demonstrate that when sex and age dimensions are simultaneously categorized, only for infant faces does age influence sex categorization. In contrast, the sex of both young and older adults was shown to influence age categorization. The functional implications of these findings are discussed in light of previous person perception research.

How "it gets better": effectively communicating support to targets of prejudice.

What is said when communicating intergroup support to targets of prejudice, and how do targets react? We hypothesized that people not targeted by prejudice reference social connection (e.g., social support) more than social change (e.g., calling for a reduction in prejudice) in their supportive messages. However, we hypothesized that targets of prejudice would be more comforted by social change messages. We content coded naturalistic messages of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning teenagers from youtube.com (Study 1) and college undergraduates' statements (Study 2a) and found social connection messages more frequent than social change messages. Next, we explored targets' responses (Studies 2b-4b). Lesbian and gay participants rated social connection messages less comforting than social change messages (Study 3). Study 4 showed that only targets of prejudice distinguish social connection from social change messages in this way, versus non-targets. These results highlight the importance of studying the communication, content, and consequences of positive intergroup attitudes.

Communicating without the Face: Holistic Perception of Emotions of People with Facial Paralysis.

People with facial paralysis (FP) report social difficulties, but some attempt to compensate by increasing expressivity in their bodies and voices. We examined perceivers' emotion judgments of videos of people with FP to understand how they interpret the combination of an inexpressive face with an expressive body and voice. Results suggest perceivers form less favorable impressions of people with severe FP, but compensatory expression is effective in improving impressions. Perceivers seemed to form holistic impressions when rating happiness and possibly sadness. Findings have implications for basic emotion research and social functioning interventions for people with FP.

Essentialist thinking predicts decrements in children's memory for racially ambiguous faces.

Past research shows that adults often display poor memory for racially ambiguous and racial outgroup faces, with both face types remembered worse than own-race faces. In the present study, the authors examined whether children also show this pattern of results. They also examined whether emerging essentialist thinking about race predicts children's memory for faces. Seventy-four White children (ages 4-9 years) completed a face-memory task comprising White, Black, and racially ambiguous Black-White faces. Essentialist thinking about race was also assessed (i.e., thinking of race as immutable and biologically based). White children who used essentialist thinking showed the same bias as White adults: They remembered White faces significantly better than they remembered ambiguous and Black faces. However, children who did not use essentialist thinking remembered both White and racially ambiguous faces significantly better than they remembered Black faces. This finding suggests a specific shift in racial thinking wherein the boundaries between racial groups become more discrete, highlighting the importance of how race is conceptualized in judgments of racially ambiguous individuals.

Predicting fluctuations in widespread interest: memory decay and goal-related memory accessibility in internet search trends.

Memory and interest respond in similar ways to people's shifting needs and motivations. We therefore tested whether memory and interest might produce similar, observable patterns in people's responses over time. Specifically, the present studies examined whether fluctuations in widespread interest (as measured by Internet search trends) resemble two well-established memory patterns: memory decay and goal-related memory accessibility. We examined national and international events (e.g., Nobel Prize selections, holidays) that produced spikes in widespread interest in certain people and foods. When the events that triggered widespread interest were incidental (e.g., the death of a celebrity), widespread interest conformed to memory decay patterns: It rose quickly, fell slowly according to a power function, and was higher after the event than before it. When the events that triggered widespread interest were goal related (e.g., political elections), widespread interest conformed to patterns of goal-related memory accessibility: It rose slowly, fell quickly according to a sigmoid function, and was lower after the event than before it. Fluctuations in widespread interest over time are thus similar to standard memory patterns observed at the individual level due perhaps to common mechanisms and functions.

Fluid movement and fluid social cognition: bodily movement influences essentialist thought.

Rigid social categorization can lead to negative social consequences such as stereotyping and prejudice. The authors hypothesized that bodily experiences of fluidity would promote fluidity in social-categorical thinking. Across a series of experiments, fluid movements compared with nonfluid movements led to more fluid lay theories of social categories, more fluidity in social categorization, and consequences of fluid social-categorical thinking, decreased stereotype endorsement, and increased concern for social inequalities. The role of sensorimotor states in fluid social cognition, with consequences for social judgment and behavior, is discussed.

Simulating sensorimotor metaphors: novel metaphors influence sensory judgments.

Embodied cognition theory proposes that individuals' abstract concepts can be associated with sensorimotor processes. The authors examined the effects of teaching participants novel embodied metaphors, not based in prior physical experience, and found evidence suggesting that they lead to embodied simulation, suggesting refinements to current models of embodied cognition. Creating novel embodiments of abstract concepts in the laboratory may be a useful method for examining mechanisms of embodied cognition.