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Perceiving the decreasing prototypicality of Black vs White elicited activation in prefrontal regions (A), including ACC (left) and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (right). Explicit prejudice corresponded with increased ACC response to the decreasing prototypicality of Black vs White faces (B).
Source publication
Less racially prototypic faces elicit more category competition during race categorization. Top-down factors (e.g. stereotypes), however, affect categorizations, suggesting racial prototypicality may enhance category competition in certain perceivers. Here, we examined how prejudice affects race category competition and stabilization when perceivin...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... assessed regions responsive to the decreasing prototypicality of Black vs White faces using the contrast [Decreasing prototypicality: Black > Decreasing prototypicality: White] (Table 3A). This contrast revealed predicted ACC engagement as well as ventrolateral prefrontal and middle frontal gyrus activity (Figure 2A). These areas activated more for prototypically decreasing Black vs White faces. ...
Context 2
... correlated parameter estimates from the [Decreasing prototypicality: Black > Decreasing prototypicality: White] contrast for each participant extracted from a conflict-responsive ACC seed (see above) with questionnaire scores. Higher prejudice (ATB) corresponded with more ACC response for prototypically decreasing Black over White faces, r(27) ¼ 0.43, P ¼ 0.02 ( Figure 2B). IMS (r(27) ¼ -0.31, P ¼ 0.10) and EMS (r(27) ¼ 0.04, P ¼ 0.82) were non-significantly correlated with ACC activity. ...
Citations
... A term neutral to exact timing such as late negativity may be preferred over N450 because the timing of the negative deflection varies across studies and can span beyond 700+ ms, possibly reflecting two or more transient ERP effects (West and Bailey, 2012). The neural generator of the conflict-indexing ERP components is thought to be the ACC (Botvinick et al, 2001(Botvinick et al, , 2004West, 2003)-a structure that was found to also be implicated, in ACC-insular circuits, in implicit ingroup (racial) prejudice (Liu et al, 2015; see also, Amodio et al, 2004), whereas explicit prejudice was found to correspond with increased ACC response to decreasing prototypicality in racial stereotype (Cassidy et al, 2017). ...
Background and objective:
Implicit social cognition refers to attitudes and stereotypes that may reside outside conscious awareness and control but that still affect human behavior. In particular, the implicit favoritism of an ingroup, to which an individual belongs, as opposed to an outgroup, to which the individual does not belong, characterized as ingroup bias, is of interest and investigated here.
Method:
We used a Go/NoGo association task (GNAT) and behavioral and electroencephalographic (event-related EEG potential [ERP] analysis) measures to investigate the implicit bias toward cities in East Germany, West Germany, and Europe, in 16 individuals each from West and East Germany (mixed gender, Mage = 24). The GNAT assesses an individual's Go and NoGo responses for a given association between a target category and either pole (positive or negative) of an evaluative dimension.
Results:
Behavioral measures revealed slightly faster reaction times to the combination of European city names and negative, as compared with positive, evaluative words in both groups. ERP analysis showed an increased negativity at 400-800 ms poststimulus in the incongruent conditions of East German city/positive word pairings (in West Germans) and West German city/positive word pairings (in East Germans).
Conclusion:
An implicitly moderately negative evaluation of Europe by both groups was exhibited based on the behavioral data, and an increased level of conflict arising from the "incongruent" pairings (ie, as manifestation of an implicitly negative attitude toward East Germany in West Germans, and toward West Germany in East Germans) was exhibited based on the electrophysiological data.
... For example, in social neuroscience, some have argued that the dACC is important for social pain or rejection (Lieberman et al. 2016;Lieberman and Eisenberger 2015); but see (Wager et al. 2016). In other cross-disciplinary work, it has been argued that the dACC is important for social, cognitive, and affective conflicts (Botvinick et al. 1999;Botvinick et al. 2001;Carter et al. 1998;Cassidy et al. 2017;Hehman et al. 2014;MacLeod and MacDonald 2000;Milham et al. 2001;Ochsner et al. 2009;Stolier and Freeman 2017), or decision uncertainty or ambiguity (Neta et al. 2013;Sterzer et al. 2002;Thompson-Schill et al. 1997). In particular, the dACC has been associated with novelty (Wessel et al. 2012), prediction of response outcome (Alexander and Brown 2011) risk (Brown and Braver 2007), and even simply increased reaction time (Grinband et al. 2011). ...
The cingulo-opercular (CO) network and its two best studied regions – the dorsal anterior cingulate and anterior insula – have been linked to task control, but also implicated in many additional processes across cognitive, social, and emotional domains. However, most prior work investigating the CO network has used a group-average approach, which may mix signals across nearby regions that vary across individuals. Here, we reevaluate the CO network’s role in task control with both task and rest fMRI, using regions with a high probability of CO network agreement across individuals. Hierarchical clustering analyses suggest heterogeneity in the CO network’s task response properties, with one sub-system (CO1) showing consistency with prior task control characterizations while another sub-system (CO2) has weak task control responses, but preserved ties to pain and motor functions. Resting-state connectivity confirms subtle differences in the architecture of these two sub-systems. This evidence suggests that, when individual variation in network locations is addressed, the CO network includes (at least) two linked sub-systems with differential roles in task control and other cognitive/motor/interoceptive responses, which may help explain varied accounts of its functions. We propose that this fractionation may reflect expansion of primary CO body-oriented control functions to broader domain-general contexts.
... Inspired by these findings, Persson et al. (2021) recently explored the effect that groups of varying size (i.e., 2, 3, or 4 same-sex persons) versus individuals (i.e., people vs. person perception) exert on stereotype-based responding in a sequential-priming task (Kidder et al., 2018). It was expected that, because of increased categorical intensity (Blair et al., 2005;Cassidy et al., 2017;Dixon & Maddox, 2005;Freeman & Ambady, 2009;Locke et al., 2005;Pauker & Ambady, 2009), groups (vs. individuals) would generate larger priming effects, with group size moderating the strength of stereotype-based priming. ...
Whether group impact social perception is a topic of renewed theoretical and empirical interest. In particular, it remains unclear when and how the composition of a group influences a core component of social cognition—stereotype-based responding. Accordingly, exploring this issue, here we investigated the extent to which different task requirements moderate the stereotype-related products of people perception. Following the presentation of same-sex groups that varied in facial typicality (i.e., high or low femininity/masculinity), participants had to report either the gender-related status of target words (i.e., a group-irrelevant gender-classification task) or whether the items were stereotypic or counter-stereotypic with respect to the preceding groups (i.e., a group-relevant stereotype-status task). Critically, facial typicality only impacted performance in the stereotype-status task. A further computational analysis (i.e., Diffusion Model) traced this effect to the combined operation of stimulus processing and response biases during decision-making. Specifically, evidence accumulation was faster when targets followed groups that were high (vs. low) in typicality and these arrays also triggered a stronger bias toward stereotypic (vs. counter-stereotypic) responses. Collectively, these findings elucidate when and how group variability influences people perception.
... While culturally dominant identities may be normatively afforded social power through both visibility and invisibility, their counterparts are also normatively denied social power through both. Implicit and explicit bias may both predict the attribution of specific social identities to individuals, with identities that enjoy relatively more social capital being considered more prototypical (Cassidy et al., 2017;Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003). Conversely, identities which are considered non-prototypical may receive less attention from experimental participants, leading them to be treated as less distinguishable and more interchangeable (Sesko & Biernat, 2010). ...
There is a substantial body of literature showing that men and women speak differently and that these differences are endemic to the speech signal. However, the psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the integration of social category perception and language are still poorly understood. Speaker attributes such as emotional state, age, sex, and race have often been treated in the literature as dissociable, but perceptual systems for social categories demonstrably rely on interdependent cognitive processes. We introduce a diversity science framework for evaluating the existing literature on gender and speech perception, arguing that differences in beliefs about gender may be defined as differences in beliefs about differences . Treating individual, group, and societal level contrasts in ideological patterns as phenomenologically distinctive, we enumerate six ideological arenas which define claims about gender and examine the literature for treatment of these issues. We argue that both participants and investigators predictably show evidence of differences in ideological attitudes toward the normative definition of persons. The influence of social knowledge on linguistic perception therefore occurs in the context of predictable variation in both attention and inattention to people and the distinguishing features which mark them salient as kinds. We link experiences of visibility, invisibility, and hypervisibility with ideological variation regarding the significance of physiological, linguistic, and social features, concluding that gender ideologies are implicated both in linguistic processing and in social judgments of value between groups. We conclude with a summary of the key gaps in the current literature and recommendations for best practices studies that may use in future investigations of socially meaningful variation in speech perception.
This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language in Mind and Brain
Psychology > Language
Linguistics > Language Acquisition
Psychology > Perception and Psychophysics
... intuitive hypothesis arises-group perception may amplify stereotype-based responding. Specifically, if solitary persons prompt stereotype activation, this effect may be bolstered when multiple triggering stimuli are encountered simultaneously (i.e., cue intensity amplifies stereotype activation; Blair et al., 2005;Cassidy et al., 2017;Dixon & Maddox, 2005;Freeman & Ambady, 2009;Locke et al., 2005;Macrae et al., 2002;Pauker & Ambady, 2009). Two independent lines of inquiry suggest such a possibility. ...
A characteristic feature of daily life is encountering people in groups. Surprisingly, however, at least during the initial stages of processing, research has focused almost exclusively on the construal of single individuals. As such, it remains unclear whether person and people (i.e., group) perception yield comparable or divergent outcomes. Addressing this issue, here we explored a core social-cognitive topic — stereotype activation — by presenting both single and multiple facial primes in a sequential-priming task. In addition, the processes underlying task performance were probed using a drift diffusion model analysis. Based on prior work, it was hypothesized that multiple (vs. single) primes would increase stereotype-based responding. Across two experiments, a consistent pattern of results emerged. First, stereotype priming was insensitive to the number of primes that were presented and occurred only at a short prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (i.e., 250 ms). Second, priming was underpinned by a bias toward congruent (vs. incongruent) prime-target responses. Collectively these findings advance understanding of the emergence and origin of stereotype priming during person and people perception.
... It is believed that the hand movements in mouse-tracking paradigms reflect neurological processes underlying the decision process [for an overview, see 30], for instance the preparation of multiple motor plans in the motor cortex [32]. The degree of cognitive conflict captured via mouse-movements has been associated with the level of anterior cingulate cortex activity [33], a brain region that is central to conflict detection and resolution [34,35]. Mouse-tracking as a process tracing method was initially introduced in the area of language processing [36], but has since spread across a broad range of psychological fields [for recent reviews, see 37,38]. ...
Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) or Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) suffer from substantial interpersonal dysfunction and have difficulties establishing social bonds. A tendency to form negative first impressions of others could contribute to this by way of reducing approach behavior. We tested whether women with BPD or SAD would show negative impression formation compared to healthy women (HCs). We employed the Thin Slices paradigm and showed videos of 52 authentic target participants to 32 women with BPD, 29 women with SAD, and 37 HCs. We asked participants to evaluate whether different positive or negative adjectives described targets and expected BPD raters to provide the most negative ratings, followed by SAD and HC. BPD and SAD raters both agreed with negative adjectives more often than HCs (e.g., 'Yes, the person is greedy'), and BPD raters rejected positive adjectives more often (e.g., 'No, the person is not humble.'). However, BPD and SAD raters did not differ significantly from each other. Additionally, we used the novel process tracing method mouse-tracking to assess the cognitive conflict (via trajectory deviations) raters experienced during decision-making. We hypothesized that HCs would experience more conflict when making unfavorable (versus favorable) evaluations and that this pattern would flip in BPD and SAD. We quantified cognitive conflict via maximum absolute deviations (MADs) of the mouse-trajectories. As hypothesized, HCs showed more conflict when rejecting versus agreeing with positive adjectives. The pattern did not flip in BPD and SAD but was substantially reduced, such that BPD and SAD showed similar levels of conflict when rejecting and agreeing with positive adjectives. Contrary to the hypothesis for BPD and SAD, all three groups experienced substantial conflict when agreeing with negative adjectives. We discuss therapeutic implications of the combined choice and mouse-tracking results.
... To our knowledge, no neuroimaging studies of Black prototypicality have implicated the insula, but these previous studies (e.g. [36,37]) used face stimuli of mono-racial individuals who were unambiguously categorized as Black or White. In the current research, we sought to examine insula activity in response to racial ambiguity using artificially morphed mixed-race faces that were of maximal ambiguity and therefore difficult to categorize based on race. ...
Multiracial individuals are often categorized as members of their ‘socially subordinate’ racial group—a form of social discrimination termed hypodescent—with political conservatives more likely than liberals to show this bias. Although hypodescent has been linked to racial hierarchy preservation motives, it remains unclear how political ideology influences categorization: Do conservatives and liberals see, feel or think about mixed-race faces differently? Do they differ in sensitivity to Black prototypicality (i.e. skin tone darkness and Afrocentric features) or racial ambiguity (i.e. categorization difficulty) of Black/White mixed-race faces? To help answer these questions, we collected a politically diverse sample of White participants and had them categorize mixed-race faces as Black or White during functional neuroimaging. We found that conservatism was related to greater anterior insula activity to racially ambiguous faces, and this pattern of brain activation mediated conservatives' use of hypodescent. This demonstrates that conservatives' greater sensitivity to racial ambiguity (rather than Black prototypicality) gives rise to greater categorization of mixed-race individuals into the socially subordinate group and tentatively suggests that conservatives may differ from liberals in their affective reactions to mixed-race faces. Implications for the study of race categorization and political psychology are discussed.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'.
... The notion that cognitive conflict plays an essential role in the control of behavior is a longstanding concept in cognitive science (e.g., Berlyne, 1960;Botvinik et al., 2001), and cognitive conflict has been revealed in a wide variety of tasks including social dilemmas (Kieslich & Hilbig, 2014;Rand et al., 2012), the Stroop task (Damen, Strick, Taris, & Aarts, 2018;Stroop, 1935), deliberate rule violation (Pfister, 2016), and categorizing both human (Freeman, Ambady, Rule, & Johnson, 2008) and non-human faces (Weis & Weise, 2017). And several recent studies provide neural evidence linking the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)-a region implicated in conflict monitoring (MacDonald et al., 2000;Botvinick et al., 2001;Pochon et al., 2008)-to increased response conflict (Cassidy, Sprout, Freeman & Krendl, 2017). For example, ACC activation is associated with response conflict during tasks in which humans rate the attractiveness (Pochon et al., 2008) and prototypicality of human faces (Cassidy et al., 2017). ...
... And several recent studies provide neural evidence linking the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)-a region implicated in conflict monitoring (MacDonald et al., 2000;Botvinick et al., 2001;Pochon et al., 2008)-to increased response conflict (Cassidy, Sprout, Freeman & Krendl, 2017). For example, ACC activation is associated with response conflict during tasks in which humans rate the attractiveness (Pochon et al., 2008) and prototypicality of human faces (Cassidy et al., 2017). The present study builds on previous research by using mouse-tracking to investigate the relationship between web objects characteristics and cognitive conflict. ...
The present study used mouse-tracking to investigate the impacts of web object characteristics on cognitive conflict during a naturalistic website use task. An online survey (N = 191) gathered baseline location typicality ratings for common web objects. An in-person laboratory study (N = 101) presented images of popular websites with target objects in expected (e.g., Cart, top right) or unexpected (e.g., Cart, top left) locations. Participants searched for and clicked on targets while continuous mouse trajectories were recorded. Mouse-tracking measures revealed evidence for cognitive conflict for three of the targets when they appeared in unexpected locations (Menu, Cart, Account). Response times and error rates were unaffected, and results were robust to variability in familiarity with targets and websites. These results suggest that mouse-tracking can be used to examine the relationship between target characteristics and cognitive conflict, and that cognitive conflict depends on the identity and location of web objects.
... In sex-atypical trials (e.g., feminized male faces) mouse trajectories were spatially more biased (curved) towards the oppositegender stereotype label (e.g., caring) compared to sex-typical trials revealing a parallel activation of the stereotype knowledge related to the sexes. This real-time dynamic of social categorization has been reported for explicit stereotypical attitudes (e.g., Cloutier et al., 2014;Freeman & Ambady, 2011;Freeman, Pauker, & Sanchez, 2016;Wojnowicz, Ferguson, Dale, & Spivey, 2009), also varying as a function of personally-held prejudices (Cassidy, Sprout, Freeman, & Krendl, 2017), and implicit attitudes (e.g., Yu, Wang, Wang, & Bastin, 2012). Based on stereotype-induced cognitive conflict, mouse movements also have been used to predict actual consequential behavior (e.g., voting behavior: Hehman, Carpinella, Johnson, Leitner, & Freeman, 2014;trust: Freeman et al., 2016). ...
... The mouse-tracking results indicate that age stereotypes were activated during source attribution prompting individuals to consider both sources. Mouse tracking, therefore, informed us that participants were actually attracted towards and considering the unchosen source based on its stereotypical features (e.g., replicating Cassidy et al., 2017;Freeman & Ambady, 2009;. The results also show the added value of analyzing mouse trajectories during source attributions: Mouse movements are better able to capture this simultaneous consideration of both sources compared to, for instance, reaction times. ...
The goal of this study was to understand the cognitive dynamics of stereotype influences on source monitoring employing mouse tracking. By continuously recording cursor movements, we examined how stereotypical knowledge influences decision uncertainty when processing and later remembering stereotype-consistent and-inconsistent exemplars of the age categories of "young" and "old". In a source-monitoring task, participants (N = 60) learned age-stereotype consistent or-inconsistent statements from two different-aged sources (young vs. old person) that they attributed to their original sources via mouse clicks in a later memory test. Our results showed that individuals experienced cognitive conflict during source attributions depending on both the cor-rectness of the source response and whether the original source was (in)consistent with the stereotype of the respective age group reflected in the statement. This pattern of results was supplemented by the analysis of prototypical mouse-trajectory clusters. Modeling individual source-monitoring processes revealed that in-dividuals' experienced conflict was less pronounced when they remembered the source and was unrelated to guessing resulting from memory failure. These results highlight the benefits of combining cognitive modeling and process-tracing techniques to unpack the mechanisms behind social influences on source monitoring. The methodology of mouse tracking illuminated the role of stereotypes in the underlying cognitive processes during source attributions that is not evident from discrete categorical responses. For designed counter-stereotypical interventions, process-tracing methods may also be used to test their effectiveness on cognitive processes involved in source monitoring.
... Work has revealed that darker skinned Blacks and those displaying stronger Afrocentric features are perceived, evaluated, and treated more negatively than their lighter skinned and less facially prototypical counterparts (e.g., Blair, Chapleau, & Judd, 2005;Blair, Judd, & Chapleau, 2004;Dixon & Maddox, 2005;Hagiwara, Kashy, & Cesario, 2012;Livingston & Brewer, 2002).). That is, person evaluation is sensitive to the facial appearance of group members (Cassidy, Sprout, Freeman, & Krendl, 2017;Freeman & Ambady, 2009;Pauker & Ambady, 2009;Walker & Wänke, 2017), such that exemplar typicality moderates the strength of stereotype activation (Locke, Macrae, & Eaton, 2005). ...
Stereotypes facilitate the processing of expectancy-consistent (vs expectancy-inconsistent) information, yet the underlying origin of this congruency effect remains unknown. As such, here we sought to identify the cognitive operations through which stereotypes influence decisional processing. In six experiments, participants responded to stimuli that were consistent or inconsistent with respect to prevailing gender stereotypes. To identify the processes underpinning task performance, responses were submitted to a hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM) analysis. A consistent pattern of results emerged. Whether manipulated at the level of occupational (Expts. 1, 3, and 5) or trait-based (Expts. 2, 4, and 6) expectancies, stereotypes facilitated task performance and influenced decisional processing via a combination of response and stimulus biases. Specifically, (1) stereotype-consistent stimuli were classified more rapidly than stereotype-inconsistent stimuli; (2) stereotypic responses were favoured over counter-stereotypic responses (i.e., starting-point shift towards stereotypic responses); (3) less evidence was required when responding to stereotypic than counter-stereotypic stimuli (i.e., narrower threshold separation for stereotypic stimuli); and (4) decisional evidence was accumulated more efficiently for stereotype-inconsistent than stereotype-consistent stimuli and when targets had a typical than atypical facial appearance. Collectively, these findings elucidate how stereotypes influence person construal.
