Perceiving Sophisticated Minds Influences Perceptual Individuation

In six studies, we investigated how ascribing humanlike versus animallike minds to targets influences how easily targets are individuated. Across the studies, participants learned to discriminate among a variety of “aliens” (actually Greebles). Our initial study showed that participants’ ability to learn to individuate targets was related to beliefs that targets had sophisticated minds. Investigating the directionality of this relationship, we found that learning to better recognize the targets did not affect perceptions of mind (Study 2). However, when targets were described as having sophisticated humanlike (relative to simplistic animallike) mental faculties, perceivers indicated more motivation to individuate (Study 3) and were more successful individuating them (Studies 4 and 5). Finally, we showed that increased self-similarity mediated the relationship between targets’ mental sophistication and perceivers’ motivation to individuate (Study 6). These findings indicate ascribing sophisticated mental faculties to others has implications for how we individuate them

Facing humanness: Facial width-to-height ratio predicts ascriptions of humanity

The ascription of mind to others is central to social cognition. Most research on the ascription of mind has focused on motivated, top-down processes. The current work provides novel evidence that facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) serves as a bottom-up perceptual signal of humanness. Using a range of well-validated operational definitions of humanness, we provide evidence across five studies that target faces with relatively greater fWHR are seen as less than fully human compared to their relatively lower fWHR counterparts. We then present two ancillary studies exploring whether the fWHR-to-humanness link is mediated by previously established fWHR-trait links in the literature. Finally, three additional studies extend this fWHR-humanness link beyond measurements of humanness, demonstrating that the fWHR-humanness link has consequences for downstream social judgments including the sorts of crimes people are perceived to be guilty of and the social tasks for which they seem helpful. In short, we provide evidence for the hypothesis that individuals with relatively greater facial width-to-height ratio are routinely denied sophisticated, humanlike minds

Trait Anthropomorphism Predicts Ascribing Human Traits to Upright But Not Inverted Chimpanzee Faces

The ascription of humanlike qualities to non-human stimuli (i.e., anthropomorphism) is a well-established phenomenon. To date, most research has examined top-down factors that motivate anthropomorphism, including individual differences in the tendency to project humanity onto nonhuman objects. However, recent evidence suggests that configural face processing provides a bottom-up perceptual cue for a target's humanness. In the current work, we link these recent findings on bottom-up perceptual cues of humanness to the well-established literature on anthropomorphism. In three studies, participants rated a series of chimpanzee faces on a variety of traits typically considered distinctly human, while manipulating whether the faces were viewed upright or inverted. Collectively, we found an interaction between individual differences in trait anthropomorphism and face orientation. Anthropomorphic beliefs positively predicted ascribing humanlike traits to upright chimpanzee faces but this effect was diminished by face inversion. These results show that disrupting configural face processing via inversion interferes with anthropomorphism. Read More: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/soco.2019.37.2.10

Overgeneralizing Belonging: Limited Exposure To Baby-Faced Targets Increases the Feeling of Social Belonging

We tested the hypothesis that exposure to babyish faces can serve a social surrogacy function, such that even limited exposure to babyish faces can fulfill social belongingness needs. We manipulated the sex and facial maturity of a target face seen in an imagined social interaction, on a between-participants basis. Regardless of target sex, individuals indicated greater satisfaction of social belongingness needs following an imagined interaction with a babyish face, compared to a mature adult face. These results indicate that brief exposure to babyish (relative to mature) faces, even without an extensive interaction, can lead to the satisfaction of social belongingness needs. © Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Overgeneralizing Belonging: Limited Exposure to Baby-Faced Targets Increases the Feeling of Social Belonging

We tested the hypothesis that exposure to babyish faces can serve a social surrogacy function, such that even limited exposure to babyish faces can fulfill social belongingness needs. We manipulated the sex and facial maturity of a target face seen in an imagined social interaction, on a between-participants basis. Regardless of target sex, individuals indicated greater satisfaction of social belongingness needs following an imagined interaction with a babyish face, compared to a mature adult face. These results indicate that brief exposure to babyish (relative to mature) faces, even without an extensive interaction, can lead to the satisfaction of social belongingness needs.

Perceiving happiness in an intergroup context: The role of race and attention to the eyes in differentiating between true and false smiles.

The present research comprises six experiments that investigated racial biases in the perception of positive emotional expressions. In an initial study, we demonstrated that White participants distinguished more in their happiness ratings of Duchenne (“true”) and non-Duchenne (“false”) smiles on White compared with Black faces (Experiment 1). In a subsequent study we replicated this effect using a different set of stimuli and non-Black participants (Experiment 2). As predicted, this bias was not demonstrated by Black participants, who did not significantly differ in happiness ratings between smile types on White and Black faces (Experiment 3). Furthermore, in addition to happiness ratings, we demonstrated that non-Black participants were also more accurate when categorizing true versus false expressions on White compared with Black faces (Experiment 4). The final two studies provided evidence for the mediating role of attention to the eyes in intergroup emotion identification. In particular, eye tracking data indicated that White participants spent more time attending to the eyes of White than Black faces and that attention to the eyes predicted biases in happiness ratings between true and false smiles on White and Black faces (Experiment 5). Furthermore, an experimental manipulation focusing participants on the eyes of targets eliminated the effects of target race or perceptions of happiness (Experiment 6). Together, the findings provide novel evidence for racial biases in the identification of positive emotions and highlight the critical role of visual attention in this process. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved