Preliminary evidence for neck musculature in shaping functional stereotypes of men's relationship motives.

Neck musculature is reliably diagnostic of men's formidability and central to several inferences of their physical prowess. These inferences facilitate stereotypes of men's social value from which perceivers estimate their abilities to satisfy reproductive goals related to mate acquisition and parental care. Participants evaluated men's interest in various mating and parenting strategies, wherein men varied in the size of visible neck musculature through trapezii and sternocleidomastoids for perceivers to identify potential reproductive interests and goals. Large trapezii elicited perceptions of men as more effective at protecting offspring, albeit at the expense of nurturance and interest in long-term pair bonds. Results extend previous findings implicating formidability as central to relationship decisions by considering a novel modality.

Black + White = Prototypically Black: Visualizing Black and White People's Mental Representations of Black-White Biracial People.

Utilizing reverse correlation, we investigated Black and White participants' mental representations of Black-White Biracial people. Across 200 trails, Black and White participants chose which of two faces best fit specific social categories. Using these decisions, we visually estimated Black and White people's mental representations of Biracial people by generating classification images (CIs). Independent raters blind to condition determined that White CI generators' Biracial CI was prototypically Blacker (i.e., more Afrocentric facial features and darker skin tone) than Black CI generators' Biracial CI (Study 1a/b). Furthermore, independent raters could not distinguish between White CI generators' Black and Biracial CIs, a bias not exhibited by Black CI generators (Study 2). A separate task demonstrated that prejudiced White participants allocated fewer imaginary funds to the more prototypically Black Biracial CI (Study 3), providing converging evidence. How phenotypicality bias, the outgroup homogeneity effect, and hypodescent influences people's mental images of ingroup/outgroup members is discussed.

On the role of experience versus motivation in predicting the own-race effect.

The other-race effect (ORE) is a longstanding phenomenon in experimental psychology, where recognition for same-race faces is superior than for other-race faces. The present research pits two competing theories of perceptual expertise and social motivation against each other to see which is the more robust predictor of the ORE. In Study 1, we measured Black and White participants' prior contact with individuals from the other-race (i.e. expertise) as well as their expected level of future interaction with other-race individuals (i.e. motivation). Of the two theories, anticipated interaction (i.e. motivation) emerged as a significant predictor of the ORE. Study 2 followed the same design, measuring motivation with a self-report assessment of how much participants are willing to have cross-race friendships. Here, neither experience nor motivation predicted the ORE, though an ORE was established. Differences in measures that assess motivation and the experience versus motivation debate are discussed.

The effects of spatial frequency on the decoding of emotional facial expressions.

The accurate identification of emotion is critical to effectively navigating our social lives. However, it is not clear how distinct types of visual information afford the accurate perception of others' emotion states. Here, we sought to examine the influence of different spatial frequency visual information on emotion categorization, and whether distinctive emotional dimensions (valence and arousal) are differentially influenced by specific spatial frequency content. Across one pilot and two experiments (N = 603), we tested whether emotional facial expressions that vary in valence, arousal, and functional significance differ in accuracy of categorization as a function of low, intact, and high spatial frequency band information. Overall, we found a general decrease in the breadth of emotional expressions for filtered images but did not see a decrease in accuracy of categorization for the positive emotion, joy. Together, these results suggest that spatial frequency information influences perception of emotional expressions that differ in valence and arousal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Crowd Salience Heightens Tolerance to Healthy Facial Features.

OBJECTIVE: Recent findings suggest crowd salience heightens pathogen-avoidant motives, serving to reduce individuals' infection risk through interpersonal contact. Such experiences may similarly facilitate the identification, and avoidance, of diseased conspecifics. The current experiment sought to replicate and extend previous crowding research. METHODS: In this experiment, we primed participants at two universities with either a crowding or control experience before having them evaluate faces manipulated to appear healthy or diseased by indicating the degree to which they would want to interact with them. RESULTS: Crowding-primed participants reported a more heightened preferences for healthy faces than control-primed participants. Additionally, crowd salience reduced aversion toward healthy faces but did not heighten aversion to diseased faces. CONCLUSION: Results suggest crowding appears to heighten tolerance for health cues given the heightened proximal threat of infections through interpersonal contact within crowded environments. Conversely, this work extends previous findings by indicating this preference is not rooted in an aversion to cues of poor health. We frame findings from a threat management perspective in understanding how crowding fosters sensitivity toward pathogenic threats.