Social perception in the real world : employing visual adaptation paradigms in the investigation of mechanisms underlying emotion and trustworthiness perception

Social context can substantially influence our perception and understanding of emotion and action of observed individuals. However, less is known about how temporal context can affect our judgement of behaviour of other people. The aim of this thesis was to explore how immediate perceptual history influences social perception. Further aims were: (i) to examine whether prior visual experience influences the perception of behaviour of other individuals in a naturalistic virtual environment resembling the real world; (ii) to determine whether our judgement of emotional state or trustworthiness of observed individuals is influenced by perceptual history, and (iii) by cognitive processes such as mental state attribution to the observer; (iv) to investigate whether processing of emotion information from dynamic, whole-body action is dependent on the processing of body identity, and (v) dependent on the body part that conveys it. Here, visual adaptation paradigms were used to examine systematic biases in social perception following prior visual experience, and to infer potential neural mechanisms underlying social perception. The results presented in this thesis suggest that perception and understanding of behaviour of other individuals in the naturalistic virtual environment are influenced by the behaviour of other individuals within the shared social environment. Specifically, in Chapter 3, I presented data suggesting that visual adaptation mechanisms examined thus far in laboratory settings may influence our everyday perception and judgement of behaviour of other people. In Chapters 4 and 5, I showed that these biases in social perception can be attributed to visual adaptation mechanisms, which code emotions and intentions derived from actions with respect to specific action kinematics and the body part that conveyed the given emotion. The results of experiments presented in Chapter 4 demonstrated that emotions conveyed by actions are represented with respect to, and independently of, actors’ identity. These finding suggest that the mechanisms underlying processing of action emotion may operate in parallel with the mechanisms underlying processing emotion from other social signals such as face and voice. In Chapter 6, I showed that cognitive processes underlying Theory of Mind, such as mental state attribution, can also influence perceptual processing of emotional signals. Finally, results presented in Chapter 7 suggest that judgments of complex social traits such as trustworthiness derived from faces are also influenced by perceptual history. These results also yielded strong sex differences in assessing trustworthiness of an observed individual; female observers showed a strong bias in perception resulting from adaptation to (un)trustworthiness, while male observers were less influenced by prior visual context. Together these findings suggest that social perception in the real world may be sensitive not only to the social context in which an observed act is embedded, but also to the prior visual context and the observer’s beliefs regarding the observed individual. Visual adaptation mechanisms may therefore operate during our everyday perception, in order to adjust our visual system to allow for efficient and accurate judgement of socially meaningful stimuli. The findings presented in this thesis highlight the importance of studying social perception using naturalistic stimuli embedded in a meaningful social scene, in order to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms that underlie our judgement of behaviour of other people. They also demonstrate the utility of visual adaptation paradigms in studying social perception and social cognition

Discrepancy between first impression and social description, and its effect on people’s attitude

Purpose: Both facial appearance and behaviors could respectively contribute to impression formation towards an indi- vidual. However, when there is congruence between information decoded from facial appearance and behaviors which may determine impression in different ways, effect of both factors will be altered. This study aimed to investigate the discrepancy between the information carried by the face, i.e. facial trustworthiness and social description, and how these two factors influence individuals’ attitude towards a newly-met person, and their judgment with regard to warmth and competence. Methodology: An experiment was conducted, asking participants to rate their impression in terms of warmth and compe- tence towards an individual whose facial appearance was manipulated either to be trustworthy or untrustworthy, and whose behavior was described in a short vignette. Main Findings: The results indicated that social description had a significant influence on both warmth and competence impressions. Facial trustworthiness had no effect. It was also discovered that competence was found to be generally judged more positive than warmth, which implied judgment of warmth was made more reservedly. Implications: The study would serve as an antecedent to further investigation on managing people’s impression towards oneself, in which such management aids in developing and maintaining positive personal relationship amongst human beings. The study will demonstrate a new vision to the researchers in cognition and perception on exploring approaches to define the mechanism involved in impression formation or attitude. Novelty: Researchers trust that currently there is still no related research that would determine the direction and strength of effect from facial trustworthiness and social description

Discrepancy between first impression and social description, and its effect on people’s attitude

Purpose: Both facial appearance and behaviors could respectively contribute to impression formation towards an indi- vidual. However, when there is congruence between information decoded from facial appearance and behaviors which may determine impression in different ways, effect of both factors will be altered. This study aimed to investigate the discrepancy between the information carried by the face, i.e. facial trustworthiness and social description, and how these two factors influence individuals’ attitude towards a newly-met person, and their judgment with regard to warmth and competence. Methodology: An experiment was conducted, asking participants to rate their impression in terms of warmth and compe- tence towards an individual whose facial appearance was manipulated either to be trustworthy or untrustworthy, and whose behavior was described in a short vignette. Main Findings: The results indicated that social description had a significant influence on both warmth and competence impressions. Facial trustworthiness had no effect. It was also discovered that competence was found to be generally judged more positive than warmth, which implied judgment of warmth was made more reservedly. Implications: The study would serve as an antecedent to further investigation on managing people’s impression towards oneself, in which such management aids in developing and maintaining positive personal relationship amongst human beings. The study will demonstrate a new vision to the researchers in cognition and perception on exploring approaches to define the mechanism involved in impression formation or attitude. Novelty: Researchers trust that currently there is still no related research that would determine the direction and strength of effect from facial trustworthiness and social description

The relative contributions of facial shape and surface information to perceptions of attractiveness and dominance

Although many studies have investigated the facial characteristics that influence perceptions of others’ attractiveness and dominance, the majority of these studies have focused on either the effects of shape information or surface information alone. Consequently, the relative contributions of facial shape and surface characteristics to attractiveness and dominance perceptions are unclear. To address this issue, we investigated the relationships between ratings of original versions of faces and ratings of versions in which either surface information had been standardized (i.e., shape-only versions) or shape information had been standardized (i.e., surface-only versions). For attractiveness and dominance judgments of both male and female faces, ratings of shape-only and surface-only versions independently predicted ratings of the original versions of faces. The correlations between ratings of original and shape-only versions and between ratings of original and surface-only versions differed only in two instances. For male attractiveness, ratings of original versions were more strongly related to ratings of surface-only than shape-only versions, suggesting that surface information is particularly important for men’s facial attractiveness. The opposite was true for female physical dominance, suggesting that shape information is particularly important for women’s facial physical dominance. In summary, our results indicate that both facial shape and surface information contribute to judgments of others’ attractiveness and dominance, suggesting that it may be important to consider both sources of information in research on these topics

Does the interaction between cortisol and testosterone predict men's facial attractiveness?

Although some researchers have suggested that the interaction between cortisol and testosterone predicts ratings of men’s facial attractiveness, evidence for this pattern of results is equivocal. Consequently, the current study tested for a correlation between men’s facial attractiveness and the interaction between their cortisol and testosterone levels. We also tested for corresponding relationships between the interaction between cortisol and testosterone and ratings of men’s facial health and dominance (perceived traits that are correlated with facial attractiveness in men). We found no evidence that ratings of either facial attractiveness or health were correlated with the interaction between cortisol and testosterone. Some analyses suggested that the interaction between cortisol and testosterone levels may predict ratings of men’s facial dominance, however, with testosterone being more closely related to facial dominance ratings among men with higher cortisol. Our results suggest that the relationship between men’s facial attractiveness and the interaction between cortisol and testosterone is not robust

The associations of anger and hope with project retention decisions: A case study

The role of emotions and cognition in entrepreneurship and strategic decision-making research has thus far been relatively neglected. In this research, we investigate how anger and hope may influence managers’ project retention decisions. While case studies can never test theories, our research aims to expose the Appraisal Tendency Framework (ATF) to empirical reality in a new context. A Palestinian research context characterized by extreme uncertainty is chosen as one that arguably amplifies the effects of high levels of emotion. Three businesses within a holding company were identified and twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers responsible for strategic decision-making, with data analysed using Content and Thematic Analyses. The emotions of hope and anger were each independently found to be associated with project retention decisions. However, when hope and anger were experienced together, hope complemented a positive association between anger and retention. The AFT proposes that emotions with different valence (i.e., negative anger and positive hope) may be associated with corresponding thought processes (heuristic or systematic) and still result in similar behavioural outcomes. The findings also highlight implications of decision-making under uncertainty, for practitioners who may benefit from differentiating between the positive and negative influences of anger on decisions

Action adaptation during natural unfolding social scenes influences action recognition and inferences made about actor beliefs

When observing another individual's actions, we can both recognize their actions and infer their beliefs concerning the physical and social environment. The extent to which visual adaptation influences action recognition and conceptually later stages of processing involved in deriving the belief state of the actor remains unknown. To explore this we used virtual reality (life-size photorealistic actors presented in stereoscopic three dimensions) to see how visual adaptation influences the perception of individuals in naturally unfolding social scenes at increasingly higher levels of action understanding. We presented scenes in which one actor picked up boxes (of varying number and weight), after which a second actor picked up a single box. Adaptation to the first actor's behavior systematically changed perception of the second actor. Aftereffects increased with the duration of the first actor's behavior, declined exponentially over time, and were independent of view direction. Inferences about the second actor's expectation of box weight were also distorted by adaptation to the first actor. Distortions in action recognition and actor expectations did not, however, extend across different actions, indicating that adaptation is not acting at an action-independent abstract level but rather at an action-dependent level. We conclude that although adaptation influences more complex inferences about belief states of individuals, this is likely to be a result of adaptation at an earlier action recognition stage rather than adaptation operating at a higher, more abstract level in mentalizing or simulation systems

Teachers’ continuance intention towards using Madrasati platform: a conceptual framework

With the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Saudi government suspended students from going to school to combat the outbreak. As e-learning was not applied at all in schools, online teaching and learning have been revived in Saudi Arabia by providing a new platform called ‘Madrasati’. The Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour (DTPB) is used to examine individuals’ intention behaviour in many fields. Nevertheless, the factors that affect teachers’ continuance intention of the Madrasati platform have not yet been investigated. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual model in light with DTPB. To enhance the predictability of the model, the study incorporates other variables including learning content quality and interactivity as sub-factors under the perceived usefulness, students and government influences under the subjective norms, and technical support and prior e-learning experience under the perceived behavioural control. The model will be further validated using a mixed methods approach. Such findings would help administrators and stakeholders to understand teachers’ needs and develop new methods that might encourage teachers to continue using Madrasati effectively in their teaching

Walking, talking and looking: effects of divided attention on gaze behaviour and visual search performance in a real-world environment

Visually-guided behaviour in the laboratory may not always reflect that in larger-scale environments, using more realistic tasks. (eg Smith et al, 2008 Cogn Process 9 121-126). Here, we explored (1) what people look at; (2) how quickly they find a target; and (3) whether divided attention (counting backwards in 7 s from 100) influences performance in a large-scale, active, visual search task in a real-world environment. Fourteen young adults (19–25 years) were asked to locate a target (white postcard) in a shop window as they walked along a pavement in Edinburgh, UK, under both ‘control’ and ‘divided attention’ conditions. Eye movements were recorded using a head-mounted eye tracker and coded manually according to object-based (‘what’) and location-based (‘where’) categories. Measurements were made from the point of first fixation on the correct shop display. Participants fixated significantly less often on task-relevant objects, and took significantly longer to find the target in the ‘divided attention’ condition compared with the control. No differences were found in terms of location-based (‘where’) categories. This suggests that real-world visual search performance in large-scale environments requires the activity of limited capacity, central attentional resources, but that visual scanning strategies (‘where’ we look) may not

Mate choice, mate preference, and biological markets : the relationship between partner choice and health preference is modulated by women's own attractiveness

Although much of the research on human mate preference assumes that mate preference and partner choice will be related to some extent, evidence for correlations between mate preference and mate choice is mixed. Inspired by biological market theories of mate choice, which propose that individuals with greater market value will be better placed to translate their preference into choice, we investigated whether participants' own attractiveness modulated the relationship between their preference and choice. Multilevel modeling showed that experimentally assessed preferences for healthy-looking other-sex faces predicted third-party ratings of partner's facial health better among women whose faces were rated as more attractive by third parties. This pattern of results was not seen for men. These results suggest that the relationship between mate preference and mate choice may be more complex than was assumed in previous research, at least among women. Our results also highlight the utility of biological market theories for understanding the links between mate preference and partner choice