The timecourse of race and status based person perception
Date
2023
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Humans rapidly and efficiently categorize others with limited information, forming split-second impressions. Prior work on the timecourse of impression formation has often focused on the integration of perceptual social categories or information (e.g., race, gender, age). Less is known about how both perceptual information and person knowledge (e.g., social status) jointly impact unfolding impressions. Using EEG, the present pre-registered study examines brain responses previously associated with changes in attention and evaluation when perceivers categorize faces based on race, conveyed via perceptual information, and socioeconomic status conveyed via person-knowledge. Our findings suggest that both attention and evaluation when attending to one social category may be influenced by the simultaneously available information about the other category. Analysis of ERPs and Select Network Modularity both reveal enhanced attention to socially salient category information. In particular, early ERP components indexing attention were particularly sensitive to High-Status individuals, but only when stereotypical race-status information pairings are present. Taken as a whole, the present work highlights the further need to consider how multiple sources of social information interact when forming impressions of others.
Description
Keywords
Electroencephalography, Face perception, Impression formation, Social neuroscience