On the Perception of Religious Group Membership from Faces

BACKGROUND: The study of social categorization has largely been confined to examining groups distinguished by perceptually obvious cues. Yet many ecologically important group distinctions are less clear, permitting insights into the general processes involved in person perception. Although religious group membership is thought to be perceptually ambiguous, folk beliefs suggest that Mormons and non-Mormons can be categorized from their appearance. We tested whether Mormons could be distinguished from non-Mormons and investigated the basis for this effect to gain insight to how subtle perceptual cues can support complex social categorizations. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Participants categorized Mormons' and non-Mormons' faces or facial features according to their group membership. Individuals could distinguish between the two groups significantly better than chance guessing from their full faces and faces without hair, with eyes and mouth covered, without outer face shape, and inverted 180°; but not from isolated features (i.e., eyes, nose, or mouth). Perceivers' estimations of their accuracy did not match their actual accuracy. Exploration of the remaining features showed that Mormons and non-Mormons significantly differed in perceived health and that these perceptions were related to perceptions of skin quality, as demonstrated in a structural equation model representing the contributions of skin color and skin texture. Other judgments related to health (facial attractiveness, facial symmetry, and structural aspects related to body weight) did not differ between the two groups. Perceptions of health were also responsible for differences in perceived spirituality, explaining folk hypotheses that Mormons are distinct because they appear more spiritual than non-Mormons. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Subtle markers of group membership can influence how others are perceived and categorized. Perceptions of health from non-obvious and minimal cues distinguished individuals according to their religious group membership. These data illustrate how the non-conscious detection of very subtle differences in others' appearances supports cognitively complex judgments such as social categorization

An investigation of a quantum probability model for the constructive effect of affective evaluation

The idea that choices can have a constructive effect has received a great deal of empirical support. The act of choosing appears to influence subsequent preferences for the options available. Recent research has proposed a cognitive model based on quantum probability, which suggests that whether or not a participant provides an affective evaluation for a positively or negatively valenced stimulus can also be constructive and so e.g. influence the affective evaluation of a second oppositely valenced stimulus. However, there are some outstanding methodological questions in relation to this previous research. This paper reports the results of three experiments designed to resolve these questions. Experiment 1, using a binary response format, provides partial support for the interaction predicted by the quantum probability model and Experiment 2, which controls for the length of time participants have to respond, fully supports the quantum probability model. Finally, Experiment 3 sought to determine whether the key effect can generalize beyond affective judgements about visual stimuli. Using judgements about the trustworthiness of well-known people, the predictions of the quantum probability model were confirmed. Together these three experiments provide further support for the quantum probability model of the constructive effect of simple evaluations

Right-Wing Politicians Prefer the Emotional Left

Physiological research suggests that social attitudes, such as political beliefs, may be partly hard-wired in the brain. Conservatives have heightened sensitivity for detecting emotional faces and use emotion more effectively when campaigning. As the left face displays emotion more prominently, we examined 1538 official photographs of conservative and liberal politicians from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States for an asymmetry in posing. Across nations, conservatives were more likely than liberals to display the left cheek. In contrast, liberals were more likely to face forward than were conservatives. Emotion is important in political campaigning and as portraits influence voting decisions, conservative politicians may intuitively display the left face to convey emotion to voters

Similarities and Differences in Chinese and Caucasian Adults' Use of Facial Cues for Trustworthiness Judgments

All cultural groups in the world place paramount value on interpersonal trust. Existing research suggests that although accurate judgments of another's trustworthiness require extensive interactions with the person, we often make trustworthiness judgments based on facial cues on the first encounter. However, little is known about what facial cues are used for such judgments and what the bases are on which individuals make their trustworthiness judgments.In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that individuals may use facial attractiveness cues as a “shortcut” for judging another's trustworthiness due to the lack of other more informative and in-depth information about trustworthiness. Using data-driven statistical models of 3D Caucasian faces, we compared facial cues used for judging the trustworthiness of Caucasian faces by Caucasian participants who were highly experienced with Caucasian faces, and the facial cues used by Chinese participants who were unfamiliar with Caucasian faces. We found that Chinese and Caucasian participants used similar facial cues to judge trustworthiness. Also, both Chinese and Caucasian participants used almost identical facial cues for judging trustworthiness and attractiveness.The results suggest that without opportunities to interact with another person extensively, we use the less racially specific and more universal attractiveness cues as a “shortcut” for trustworthiness judgments

The role of the amygdala in face perception and evaluation

Faces are one of the most significant social stimuli and the processes underlying face perception are at the intersection of cognition, affect, and motivation. Vision scientists have had a tremendous success of mapping the regions for perceptual analysis of faces in posterior cortex. Based on evidence from (a) single unit recording studies in monkeys and humans; (b) human functional localizer studies; and (c) meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies, I argue that faces automatically evoke responses not only in these regions but also in the amygdala. I also argue that (a) a key property of faces represented in the amygdala is their typicality; and (b) one of the functions of the amygdala is to bias attention to atypical faces, which are associated with higher uncertainty. This framework is consistent with a number of other amygdala findings not involving faces, suggesting a general account for the role of the amygdala in perception

Twitter language use reflects psychological differences between Democrats and Republicans

Previous research has shown that political leanings correlate with various psychological factors. While surveys and experiments provide a rich source of information for political psychology, data from social networks can offer more naturalistic and robust material for analysis. This research investigates psychological differences between individuals of different political orientations on a social networking platform, Twitter. Based on previous findings, we hypothesized that the language used by liberals emphasizes their perception of uniqueness, contains more swear words, more anxiety-related words and more feeling-related words than conservatives' language. Conversely, we predicted that the language of conservatives emphasizes group membership, contains more certainty and more references to achievement and religion than liberals' language. We analysed Twitter timelines of 5,373 followers of three Twitter accounts of the American Democratic and 5,386 followers of three accounts of the Republican parties' Congressional Organizations. The results support most of the predictions and previous findings, confirming that Twitter behaviour offers valid insights to offline behaviour

Investigating large-scale brain dynamics using field potential recordings: Analysis and interpretation

New technologies to record electrical activity from the brain on a massive scale offer tremendous opportunities for discovery. Electrical measurements of large-scale brain dynamics, termed field potentials, are especially important to understanding and treating the human brain. Here, our goal is to provide best practices on how field potential recordings (EEG, MEG, ECoG and LFP) can be analyzed to identify large-scale brain dynamics, and to highlight critical issues and limitations of interpretation in current work. We focus our discussion of analyses around the broad themes of activation, correlation, communication and coding. We provide best-practice recommendations for the analyses and interpretations using a forward model and an inverse model. The forward model describes how field potentials are generated by the activity of populations of neurons. The inverse model describes how to infer the activity of populations of neurons from field potential recordings. A recurring theme is the challenge of understanding how field potentials reflect neuronal population activity given the complexity of the underlying brain systems