The spontaneous formation of stereotypes via cumulative cultural evolution

All people share knowledge of cultural stereotypes of social groups—but what are the origins of these stereotypes? We examined whether stereotypes form spontaneously as information is repeatedly passed from person to person. As information about novel social targets was passed down a chain of individuals, what initially began as a set of random associations evolved into a system that was simplified and categorically structured. Over time, novel stereotypes emerged that not only were increasingly learnable but also allowed generalizations to be made about previously unseen social targets. By illuminating how cognitive and social factors influence how stereotypes form and change, these findings show how stereotypes might naturally evolve or be manipulated

The interplay between gaze and consistency in scene viewing : Evidence from visual search by young and older adults

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The simultaneous extraction of multiple social categories from unfamiliar faces

The research was supported by an award from the Experimental Psychology Society's Small Grant scheme.Peer reviewedPostprin

How societal stereotypes might form and evolve via cumulative cultural evolution

The current article examines how societal stereotypes might form and evolve through a process of cumulative cultural evolution as social information is repeatedly passed from person to person. Social psychology research has done much to inform our understanding about the substantial influence stereotypes exert on us as individuals and on our society, yet comparatively little is known about how society's pools of stereotype knowledge form and how they evolve. Here, we review evidence that as social information is repeatedly passed from person to person, there is a continuous cycle of stereotype formation and evolution that is driven by constraints and biases in (a) observations of the social environment, (b) cognitive representations of the social environment, and (c) social transmissions of cognitive representations of the social environment. We suggest the reason stereotypes exist and persist is because they are perfectly adapted for human cognition and the reason they are perfectly adapted for human cognition is because they are the cumulative product of human cognition

Adult age differences in using information from the eyes and mouth to make decisions about others' emotions

Acknowledgments We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Christina Pomareda and Auste Simkute with data collection. Funding This research was supported by grants from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ES/P005330/1), and from the Lily Charlton Trust.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Gaze-cueing and endogenous attention operate in parallel

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Age Differences in Gaze Following : Older Adults Follow Gaze More than Younger Adults When free-viewing Scenes

Acknowledgements We thank Teodor Nikolov, Igne Umbrasaite, Bianca Bianciardi, Sarah Kenny, and Vestina Sciaponaite for assistance with stimuli selection and data collection. Funding details This research was supported by Grant RG14082 from the Economic and Social Research Council, awarded to Louise H. Phillips, Benjamin W. Tatler and Julie HenryPeer reviewedPostprin

Intergroup processes and the happy face advantage : How social categories influence emotion categorization

Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge and thank Professor Christian Unkelbach and four anonymous reviewers for the constructive and valuable feedback they provided on previous versions of this work, particularly for their suggestions regarding the analysis strategy.Peer reviewedPostprin

Age-related changes in decoding basic social cues from the eyes

This thesis explores age differences in the ability to decode basic social cues from the face and, in particular, the eye region. Age-related declines in complex aspects of social perception, such as forced choice labelling of emotional expressions and theory of mind reasoning, are well documented.  However, research, to date, has not assessed age differences in more basic aspects of social perception such as eye-gaze detection, joint attention, or more implicit responses to emotional cues.  The first two experimental chapters of this thesis report a series of studies investigating age-related changes in gaze processing.  Both the ability to detect subtle differences in gaze direction and to subsequently follow the gaze cues given by others was found to decline with age. Age-related changes were also found in the integration of gaze direction with emotional (angry, joyful and disgusted) facial expressions, when making emotion perception and approachability judgements (Chapters 4 and 5).  Age differences in responses to happy facial expressions are further investigated in Chapter 6 by assessing sensitivity to discriminate between enjoyment and non-enjoyment smiles.  Findings indicated that older adults demonstrated a greater bias towards thinking that any smiling individual was feeling happy.  They were also more likely than younger participants to choose to approach an individual displaying a non-enjoyment smile.  The final experimental chapter explores whether the age of the face influences age-related changes in gaze following.  Age-related declines in gaze following were greatest when following the gaze cues of younger (vs. older) adults, highlighting the importance of closely matching age of stimulus and participant when investigating age differences in social perception.  Perceptual, neuropsychological and motivational explanations for these results are evaluated and implications of these research findings for older adults’ social functioning are discussed.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Exploring the specificity of age-related differences in theory of mind tasks. Psychol Aging 2007; 22: 639–43

Tasks assessing theory of mind (ToM) and non-mental state control tasks were administered to young and older adults to examine previous contradictory findings about age differences in mental state decoding. Age differences were found on a verbal ToM task after controlling for vocabulary levels. Older adults achieved significantly lower scores than did younger adults on static and dynamic visual ToM tasks, and a similar pattern was found on non-ToM control tasks. Rather than a specific ToM deficit, older adults exhibited a more general impairment in the ability to decode cues from verbal and visual information about people