Abstract:Intergroup biases shape most aspects of person construal, including lower-level visual representations of group members' faces. Specifically, ingroup members' faces tend to be represented more positively than outgroup members' faces. Here, we used a reverse-correlation paradigm to test whether engaging in perspective taking (i. e., actively imagining another person's mental states) can reduce these biased visual representations. In an initial image-generation experiment, participants were randomly assigned to … Show more
“…For example, if thinking about the common cold at the same time as COVID-19, the COVID-19 representation may appear sicker than if thinking only thinks about one illness. Indeed, the context in which people think about category members shifts representations of group member faces (Hutchings et al, 2021). Alternatively, whereas people may have indicated that COVID-19 was threatening through their explicit evaluations, these evaluations could be more influenced by societal expectations than their attitudes.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Providing further implications for public health messaging, past work has shown that people's mental representations of faces can change based on incoming information (Cassidy & Krendl, 2019; Hutchings et al, 2021; Klein et al, 2021). If sickness representations help explain how people expect others to behave, future research may explore how information from public health messaging changes people's representations of sickness in faces to alter their expectations of others’ behaviors and even their own behaviors.…”
An ecological approach to social perception states that impressions of faces have functional value in that they guide adaptive behavior ensuring people's survival. For example, people may avoid others whose faces appear sick to avoid an illness representing a survival threat. We broadened the ecological approach in the current work by examining whether merely thinking about what illnesses on faces look like (i.e., how sickness on faces is represented) holds functional value in guiding behavior to ensure survival. Using an example of a real illness threat as proof of concept, we showed that people self-reported performing more adaptive health behaviors in response to COVID-19 if they had sicker representations of COVID-19 on faces (Experiment 1a). These sicker representations of COVID-19 on faces explained, in part, a positive relation between perceptions of COVID-19 as threatening and people's self-reported adaptive health behaviors. We then replicated these patterns when experimentally manipulating illness threat (Experiment 1b). We found that people expected more adaptive health behaviors and had sicker representations of illness on faces in response to illness threats that were more relative to less threatening. These findings suggest that mentally representing sickness on faces is enough to guide people's behaviors in response to illness threats.
“…For example, if thinking about the common cold at the same time as COVID-19, the COVID-19 representation may appear sicker than if thinking only thinks about one illness. Indeed, the context in which people think about category members shifts representations of group member faces (Hutchings et al, 2021). Alternatively, whereas people may have indicated that COVID-19 was threatening through their explicit evaluations, these evaluations could be more influenced by societal expectations than their attitudes.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Providing further implications for public health messaging, past work has shown that people's mental representations of faces can change based on incoming information (Cassidy & Krendl, 2019; Hutchings et al, 2021; Klein et al, 2021). If sickness representations help explain how people expect others to behave, future research may explore how information from public health messaging changes people's representations of sickness in faces to alter their expectations of others’ behaviors and even their own behaviors.…”
An ecological approach to social perception states that impressions of faces have functional value in that they guide adaptive behavior ensuring people's survival. For example, people may avoid others whose faces appear sick to avoid an illness representing a survival threat. We broadened the ecological approach in the current work by examining whether merely thinking about what illnesses on faces look like (i.e., how sickness on faces is represented) holds functional value in guiding behavior to ensure survival. Using an example of a real illness threat as proof of concept, we showed that people self-reported performing more adaptive health behaviors in response to COVID-19 if they had sicker representations of COVID-19 on faces (Experiment 1a). These sicker representations of COVID-19 on faces explained, in part, a positive relation between perceptions of COVID-19 as threatening and people's self-reported adaptive health behaviors. We then replicated these patterns when experimentally manipulating illness threat (Experiment 1b). We found that people expected more adaptive health behaviors and had sicker representations of illness on faces in response to illness threats that were more relative to less threatening. These findings suggest that mentally representing sickness on faces is enough to guide people's behaviors in response to illness threats.
“…4 ). Similar occluded or cropped stimuli have been used in previous research (e.g., Hutchings et al, 2021 ; Rule et al, 2008 ) and we used a comparable method to examine whether differences would emerge in the ratings for apology and sad for the eyes and/or mouth regions from the apologetic and sad CIs. Fig.…”
The goal of the current research was to gain an understanding of people’s mental representations of an apologetic face. In Study 1, participants’ responses were used to generate visual templates of apologetic faces through reverse correlation (Study 1a,
n
= 121), and a new set of participants (Study 1b,
n
= 37 and 1c,
n
= 153) rated that image (group-level Classification Image, CI), as well as either the inverse image (group-level anti-CI in Study 1b) or base face (in Study 1c), on apology-related characteristics. Results demonstrated that people have a mental representation of an apologetic face, and that sadness is an important feature of this template. To examine similarities between mental representations of apologetic and sad faces, participants in Study 2 generated visual templates of sad faces using reverse correlation (Study 2a,
n
= 121). New participants (Study 2b,
n
= 162) were then randomly assigned to rate the averaged face, eyes, and mouths (group-level CIs) as well as the individual visual templates (individual-level CIs) generated from both studies for either how apologetic or sad they appeared. Visual templates of apologetic and sad faces were seen as apologetic, providing evidence of the prominence of sadness in mental representations of apology.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10919-022-00422-5.
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