Kerri L. Johnson - US grants

People tend to perceive others in terms of their social category memberships. Consequently, others are categorized according to their sex, their race, and age among other things. These perceptions occur rapidly and readily, and they are based on minimal cues in the face and body. Prior research examining how observers perceive the social category memberships of others has tended to isolate a single social category dimension (e.g., sex) while holding other dimensions constant (e.g., race and age). Yet, human beings naturally fall into multiple social categories simultaneously. Thus, the previous research has only provided a rather artificial description of the way people perceive others. Very little is known about how the perception of one social category may systematically bias the perception of other social categories. This research project systematically tests two routes to biases in social perception. First, the perception of one category may bias the perception of another category because the same face and body cues may be characteristic of multiple categories simultaneously. Second, the perception of one category may bias the perception of another category because the stereotypes associated with various social categories may be similar. Social perceptions may be biased in a "bottom-up" fashion due to common cues or in a "top-down" fashion due to common stereotypes. In order to learn more about how these processes in perception and bias actually work, the researcher will a) examine the extent to which face and body cues that characterize one social category are also valid cues for other social categories, b) test the extent to which perceivers utilize these cues when they form impressions of others that naturally fall into multiple social categories, specifically when cues to sex and race categories overlap, and c) measure the role of social stereotypes in these processes.

In addition to enhancing our understanding of biases in social perception, the research will result in the creation of stimulus archive involving race, gender and age traits that will be made freely available to researchers. This research will also provide opportunities for training and mentorship for both graduate and undergraduate students working in the lab.

In daily life, people regularly encounter unknown others, and they tend to categorize them in terms of their social category memberships, such as sex (i.e., male, female), race (e.g. , Black, White, Asian, etc. ), and emotion (e.g., happy, angry). These perceptions occur rapidly from merely a glimpse of a face or body and often produce judgments that are more evaluative in nature. Prior research examining how observers perceive others focused largely on understanding the perception of individuals. In daily life, however, we often encounter others in groups rather than in isolation. Little is known about how people quickly and accurately form impressions of groups. The proposed research builds on recent theoretical advances to test how individuals perceive groups of people. This research will provide important insights about how observers form meaningful impressions that impact their judgments, decisions, and behaviors about others. This research has important implications for social perception, stereotyping, and vision perception research.

The research tests hypotheses about the mechanisms that underlie the social perception of groups. One set of experiments tests the means by which observers accurately perceive a group?s composition (e.g., the ratio of men to women) by examining how variations in group composition, the physical appearance of group members, and the visual behavior of observers impact the accuracy of group percepts. Another set of experiments tests how members of a group are perceived as sub-groups and individually (i.e. visual assimilation or contrast). Other experiments explore the consequences of these patterns by seeking to understand how groups are evaluated by observers, leading to inferences that a group might be either hostile or hospitable to the perceiver. A final set of experiments seeks to test the mechanisms of group perception for groups that occur naturally in society (e.g., members of corporate boards, faculty rosters from university departments, and panelists at scientific conferences). This research will contribute to our understanding of the social perception of groups. The research illuminates how groups and contexts can contribute to or explain group stereotypes.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.