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Social vision research, which examines, in part, how humans visually perceive social stimuli, is well-positioned to improve understandings of social inequality. However, social vision research has rarely prioritized the perspectives of marginalized group members. We offer a theoretical argument for diversifying understandings of social perceptual processes by centering marginalized perspectives. We examine (a) how social vision researchers frame their research questions and who these framings prioritize and (b) how perceptual processes (person perception; people perception; perception of social objects) are linked to group membership and thus comprehensively understanding these processes necessitates attention to marginalized perceivers. We discuss how social vision research translates into theoretical advances and to action for reducing negative intergroup consequences (e.g., prejudice). The purpose of this article is to delineate how prioritizing marginalized perspectives in social vision research could develop novel questions, bridge theoretical gaps, and elevate social vision's translational impact to improve outcomes for marginalized groups. Social vision research is a subfield of psychology and vision science which examines how people visually perceive social stimuli and what the downstream consequences of these perceptions are. Social vision work includes, for example, examination of how White people visually perceive racial minorities and how these perceptions lead to social categorizations of racial minorities as outgroups, and therefore contribute to behaviors such as stereotyping and prejudice. Social vision research has rarely prioritized the perspectives of marginalized group members. It therefore cannot fully explain the contributions of perception to intergroup relations, which are necessarily bidirectional. We offer a theoretical argument for diversifying understandings of social perceptual processes by centering marginalized perspectives to understand how people with marginalized identities see their social worlds. We believe that prioritizing these marginalized perspectives has the potential to contribute to the development of a psychological science with heightened capacity to improve the well-being of people with marginalized identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: During face perception, we integrate facial expression and eye gaze to take advantage of their shared signals. For example, fear with averted gaze provides a congruent avoidance cue, signaling both threat presence and its location, whereas fear with direct gaze sends an incongruent cue, leaving threat location ambiguous. It has been proposed that the processing of different combinations of threat cues is mediated by dual processing routes: reflexive processing via magnocellular (M) pathway and reflective processing via parvocellular (P) pathway. Because growing evidence has identified a variety of sex differences in emotional perception, here we also investigated how M and P processing of fear and eye gaze might be modulated by observer's sex, focusing on the amygdala, a structure important to threat perception and affective appraisal. We adjusted luminance and color of face stimuli to selectively engage M or P processing and asked observers to identify emotion of the face. Female observers showed more accurate behavioral responses to faces with averted gaze and greater left amygdala reactivity both to fearful and neutral faces. Conversely, males showed greater right amygdala activation only for M‐biased averted‐gaze fear faces. In addition to functional reactivity differences, females had proportionately greater bilateral amygdala volumes, which positively correlated with behavioral accuracy for M‐biased fear. Conversely, in males only the right amygdala volume was positively correlated with accuracy for M‐biased fear faces. Our findings suggest that M and P processing of facial threat cues is modulated by functional and structural differences in the amygdalae associated with observer's sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A social-functional approach to face processing comes with a number of assumptions. First, given that humans possess limited cognitive resources, it assumes that we naturally allocate attention to processing and integrating the most adaptively relevant social cues. Second, from these cues, we make behavioral forecasts about others in order to respond in an efficient and adaptive manner. This assumption aligns with broader ecological accounts of vision that highlight a direct action-perception link, even for nonsocial vision. Third, humans are naturally predisposed to process faces in this functionally adaptive manner. This latter contention is implied by our attraction to dynamic aspects of the face, including looking behavior and facial expressions, from which we tend to overgeneralize inferences, even when forming impressions of stable traits. The functional approach helps to address how and why observers are able to integrate functionally related compound social cues in a manner that is ecologically relevant and thus adaptive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It might seem a reasonable assumption that when we are not actively using our faces to express ourselves (i.e., when we display nonexpressive, or neutral faces), those around us will not be able to read our emotions. Herein, using a variety of expression-related ratings, we examined whether age-related changes in the face can accurately reveal one's innermost affective dispositions. In each study, we found that expressive ratings of neutral facial displays predicted self-reported positive/negative dispositional affect, but only for elderly women, and only for positive affect. These findings meaningfully replicate and extend earlier work examining age-related emotion cues in the face of elderly women (Malatesta et al., 1987a). We discuss these findings in light of evidence that women are expected to, and do, smile more than men, and that the quality of their smiles predicts their life satisfaction. Although ratings of old male faces did not significantly predict self-reported affective dispositions, the trend was similar to that found for old female faces. A plausible explanation for this gender difference is that in the process of attenuating emotional expressions over their lifetimes, old men reveal less evidence of their total emotional experiences in their faces than do old women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The correct interpretation of emotional expressions is crucial for social life. However, emotions in old relative to young faces are recognized less well. One reason for this may be decreased signal clarity of older faces due to morphological changes, such as wrinkles and folds, obscuring facial displays of emotions. Across three experiments, the present research investigates how misattributions of emotions to elderly faces impair emotion discrimination. In a preliminary task, neutral expressions were perceived as more expressive in old than in young faces by human raters (Experiment 1A) and an automatic system for emotion recognition (Experiment 1B). Consequently, task difficulty was higher for old faces relative to young faces in a visual search task (Experiment 2). Specifically, participants detected old faces expressing negative emotions less accurately and slower among neutral faces of their peers than young faces among neutral faces of their peers. Thus, we argue that age-related changes in facial features are the most plausible explanation for the differences in emotion perception between young and old faces. These findings are of relevance for the social interchange with the elderly, especially when multiple older individuals are present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The amygdala is thought to be part of a neural system responsive to potential threat (1). Consistent with this is the amygdala's well-documented sensitivity to fear faces. What is puzzling, [...]

The authors respond to commentaries on the Many Labs replication project. They cite relevant points raised by the commentators who argued that much work is really necessary to triangulate in understanding any particular effect. Specific reactions to commentaries are also presented including explanations for why the authors observed an effect that was almost identical to the original finding.

Although replication is a central tenet of science, direct replications are rare in psychology. This research tested variation in the replicability of 13 classic and contemporary effects across 36 independent samples totaling 6,344 participants. In the aggregate, 10 effects replicated consistently. One effect - imagined contact reducing prejudice -- showed weak support for replicability. And two effects -- flag priming influencing conservatism and currency priming influencing system justification -- did not replicate. We compared whether the conditions such as lab versus online or US versus international sample predicted effect magnitudes. By and large they did not. The results of this small sample of effects suggest that replicability is more dependent on the effect itself than on the sample and setting used to investigate the effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Dominance is one of the most ecologically important social traits that humans express and perceive. Here, we examined perceivers' capacity to judge dominance under physical and temporal constraints. In study 1, dominant, neutral, and submissive poses of otherwise non-expressive faces and impoverished facial outlines were judged after exposure for 27 ms, 40 ms, 94 ms, or at a self-paced rate (approximately 2000 ms). Perceivers' judgments of dominance were significantly more accurate than chance guessing for exposures of 40 ms and greater, with no significant increase in accuracy given additional viewing time. In study 2, we replaced faces with bodies and figural outlines of bodies. Perceivers' judgments were again better than chance for exposures of 40 ms and greater, but significant increases in accuracy were observed for durations of 94 ms and at a self-paced rate. Finally, in study 3, we combined studies 1 and 2 to allow comparisons across stimuli. Results showed that judgments of dominance from the faces were significantly more accurate than were those of the bodies, and judgments of full stimuli were more accurate than were those of outlines. These data extend our knowledge of the efficient and accurate perception of social cues from nonverbal behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The direction of others’ eye gaze has important influences on how we perceive their emotional expressions. Here, we examined differences in neural activation to direct- versus averted-gaze fear faces as a function of culture of the participant (Japanese versus US Caucasian), culture of the stimulus face (Japanese versus US Caucasian), and the relation between the two. We employed a previously validated paradigm to examine differences in neural activation in response to rapidly presented direct- versus averted-fear expressions, finding clear evidence for a culturally determined role of gaze in the processing of fear. Greater neural responsivity was apparent to averted- versus direct-gaze fear in several regions related to face and emotion processing, including bilateral amygdalae, when posed on same-culture faces, whereas greater response to direct- versus averted-gaze fear was apparent in these same regions when posed on other-culture faces. We also found preliminary evidence for intercultural variation including differential responses across participants to Japanese versus US Caucasian stimuli, and to a lesser degree differences in how Japanese and US Caucasian participants responded to these stimuli. These findings reveal a meaningful role of culture in the processing of eye gaze and emotion, and highlight their interactive influences in neural processing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Voting to determine one’s leaders is among the most important decisions we make, yet little is known about the brain’s role in how we come to these decisions. Behavioral studies have indicated that snap judgments of political candidates’ faces can predict election outcomes but that the traits that lead to these judgments differ across cultures. Here we sought to investigate the neural basis for these judgments. American and Japanese natives performed simulated voting judgments of actual American and Japanese political candidates while neural activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Candidates for whom participants chose to vote elicited stronger responses in the bilateral amygdala than candidates for whom participants chose not to vote. This was true regardless of either the participant’s culture or the target’s culture, suggesting that these voting decisions provoked the same neural response cross-culturally. In addition, we observed a participant culture by target culture interaction in the bilateral amygdala. American and Japanese participants both showed a stronger response to cultural outgroup faces than they did to cultural ingroup faces, however this was unrelated to their voting decisions. These data provide insight to the mechanisms that underlie our snap judgments of others when making voting decisions and provide a neural correlate to cross-cultural consensus in social inferences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ability to infer others' thoughts, intentions, and feelings is regarded as uniquely human. Over the last few decades, this remarkable ability has captivated the attention of philosophers, primatologists, clinical and developmental psychologists, anthropologists, social psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists. Most would agree that the capacity to reason about others' mental states is innately prepared, essential for successful human social interaction. Whether this ability is culturally tuned, however, remains entirely uncharted on both the behavioral and neural levels. Here we provide the first behavioral and neural evidence for an intracultural advantage (better performance for same- vs. other-culture) in mental state decoding in a sample of native Japanese and white American participants. We examined the neural correlates of this intracultural advantage using fMRI, revealing greater bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci recruitment during same- versus other-culture mental state decoding in both cultural groups. These findings offer preliminary support for cultural consistency in the neurological architecture subserving high-level mental state reasoning, as well as its differential recruitment based on cultural group membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the psychological literature is replete with information about the perception of faces presented at a full-frontal view, we know very little about how faces are perceived–and impressions formed–when viewed from other angles. We tested impressions of faces at full-frontal, three-quarter, and profile views. Judgments of personality (aggressiveness, competence, dominance, likeability, and trustworthiness) and physiognomy (attractiveness and facial maturity) were significantly correlated across full-frontal, three-quarter, and profile views of male faces. When under time pressure, with only a 50 ms exposure to each face, the correlations for profile with full-frontal and three-quarter view judgments of personality (but not physiognomy) dropped considerably. However, judgments of the full-frontal and three-quarter faces were significantly correlated across the self-paced and 50 ms viewing durations. These findings therefore show that perceptions of full faces lead to relatively similar interferences across both viewing angle and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facial expressions of happiness and anger have been suggested to share morphological features with certain personality markers in the face. A study was conducted to assess the hypothesis that angry and dominant faces on one hand and happy, fearful, and affiliative faces on the other hand would be categorized together based on the features they share. A total of 89 participants (22 men) completed a double oddball task. Reaction time data confirmed the hypothesis for angry/dominant and happy/affiliative faces. This supports the notion that the perceptual markers for anger and dominance as well as happiness and affiliation have some morphological characteristics in common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans use facial cues to convey social dominance and submission. Despite the evolutionary importance of this social ability, how the brain recognizes social dominance from the face is unknown. We used event-related brain potentials (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRl) to examine the neural mechanisms underlying social dominance perception from facial cues. Participants made gender judgments while viewing aggression-related facial expressions as well as facial postures conveying dominance or submission. ERP evidence indicates that the perception of dominance from aggression-related emotional expressions occurs early in neural processing while the perception of social dominance from facial postures arises later. Brain imaging results show that activity in the fusiform gyrus, superior temporal gyrus and lingual gyrus, is associated with the perception of social dominance from facial postures and the magnitude of neural response in these regions differentiates between perceived dominance and perceived submissiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that the social stereotype that anger displays are more appropriate for men and smiling is requisite for women is based on the perception of men and women as more or less dominant or affiliative. The first study tested the mediation model that men are rated as more dominant and women as more affiliative and that expectations for men to show more anger and for women to smile more are partially mediated by this difference in perception. Second, a vignette approach was used to test the notion that these expectations translate into prescriptive social norms that are based on levels of perceived dominance and affiliation rather than sex per se. The results strongly support this hypothesis for dominance and provide partial confirmation for affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origins of the appearances of anger and fear facial expressions are not well understood. The authors tested the hypothesis that such origins might lie in the expressions' resemblance to, respectively, mature and babyish faces in three studies. In Study 1, faces expressing anger and fear were judged to physically resemble mature and babyish faces. Study 2 indicated that characteristics associated specifically with babyishness are attributed to persons showing fear, whereas characteristics associated with maturity are attributed to persons showing anger. In Study 3, composite faces were used to minimize the possibility that the attributions were based on associations to the anger and fear emotions alone rather than to the physical resemblance of the expressions to static facial appearance cues. These results suggest that fear and anger expressions may serve socially adaptive purposes for those who show them, similar to the social adaptations associated with a babyish or mature facial appearance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is good reason to believe that gaze direction and facial displays of emotion share an information value as signals of approach or avoidance. The combination of these cues in the analysis of social communication, however, has been a virtually neglected area of inquiry. Two studies were conducted to test the prediction that direct gaze would facilitate the processing of facially communicated approach-oriented emotions (e.g., anger and joy), whereas averted gaze would facilitate the processing of facially communicated avoidance-oriented emotions (e.g., fear and sadness). The results of both studies confirmed the central hypothesis and suggest that gaze direction and facial expression are combined in the processing of emotionally relevant facial information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]