1,721,051 research outputs found
The Effect of Enhancing Prototype Salience on the Accuracy of Categorizing Sexual Orientation from Faces
No full textRecent literature in person perception suggests that sexual orientation and other perceptually-ambiguous group memberships could be discerned from faces with accuracy exceeding chance levels. No study to date has explored the question of how people acquire mental representations of sexual orientation, however. In Study 1, I show that the perception of sexual orientation is distinct from that of obvious group memberships. Then, I show that people can learn prototypical representations of sexual orientation to increase their sensitivity to artificially-generated stimuli (Study 2) and to actual faces (Study 3). Last, I demonstrate that this improvement is a product of participants’ attunement to the patterns of facial features in the prototypes of the two categories. Together, the results demonstrate that people can learn mental representations of sexual orientation through exposure to environmentally relevant stimuli. Furthermore, the studies provide insights about how the mind learns social categories more generally.MAS
Charisma in Everyday Life: Conceptualization and Validation of the General Charisma Inventory
No full textAlthough both scholars and lay people are fascinated with charismatic individuals, relatively few theorists have attempted to define charisma. Much of the empirical research examining charisma has been concerned with the study of leadership. Even within that literature, however, theorists have focused on charismaâ s outcomes, leaving unarticulated precisely what charisma is. Here, I tested a new operational conceptualization of charisma in the context of everyday life. Specifically, I proposed that charisma is composed of the interpersonally-focused dimensions of influence and affability. I validated this conceptualization in a series of studies, demonstrating (i) that lay people possess a consensual idea of charisma; (ii) that charisma consists of two quantifiable dimensions, influence and affability; (iii) that charisma is distinct from other constructs of interest to psychologists and leadership theorists; (iv) that charisma is observable; and, finally, (v) that assessments of charisma predict important real world outcomes, such as persuasion and liking. These studies, therefore, provide a new, comprehensive contextualization of charisma that extends beyond the study of formal leadership. Furthermore, the current work highlights that charisma is a relevant construct to leaders and laypeople alike. Thus, this research not only attempts to conceptualize and measure charisma but also demonstrates that charisma might be important to people every day.Ph.D.2018-07-08 00:00:0
Testing the Sensorimotor Fluency Account of Mimicry
Full text linkMimicry is a pervasive and ubiquitous human behaviour with generally positive consequences, resulting in increased liking, closeness, and smoothness between interaction partners. Whereas previous research has stressed the affiliative aspect of these consequences, recent research suggests that these consequences may also arise because of the sensorimotor fluency with which mimicry is achieved. I tested three key hypotheses of this model in two experiments and found no support for a sensorimotor fluency account of mimicry. Implications of this research are discussed.M.A
The Face of a Nation: The Effect of Nationality on Face Memory and Perception
Full text linkNationality is a pervasive group membership, and previous research has variously demonstrated its potency. However, little work has investigated nationality’s relationship with person perception, an area ripe for research in today’s globalized world. Thus, the aim of this thesis was to understand how nationality affects one’s perception and memory of others. I tested how randomly pairing faces with Canadian and foreign flags affected Canadians’ memory and trait evaluations for these faces and whether nationalism predicted ingroup favouritism. I also compared memory differences for ostensible national ingroup and outgroup members to that for university ingroup and outgroup members to determine the relative importance and strength of nationality over other social identities. Across three studies, I found that Canadian participants recognized faces randomly paired with the Canadian flag better than those paired with a foreign flag, suggesting that nationality labels can affect memory for others, which has important implications for cross-national interactions.M.A
On the Competing Roles of Attractiveness and Group Membership in Person Evaluations
Full text linkIndividual preferences notwithstanding, studies on physical attractiveness have suggested that people largely agree about others’ attractiveness and favor attractive individuals. Though this attractiveness halo represents one of the strongest influences over social behavior, psychological literature has documented other robust biases as well. For instance, favoritism towards members of one’s own group guide much of a person’s thoughts and actions. Here, I investigated what happens when these two biases collide by examining how attractiveness affects implicit and explicit evaluations of ingroup and outgroup members. I hypothesized that group membership biases would cede to attractiveness biases; participants would prefer attractive individuals irrespective of group membership. However, whereas the results of Implicit Association Tests showed that participants’ evaluations of ingroup and outgroup targets differed more by group membership, semantic differential scales showed that explicit evaluations differed more by attractiveness levels. A person’s attractiveness and group membership therefore seem to separately affect others’ evaluations.M.A.2019-11-06 00:00:0
Charisma in Everyday Life: Conceptualization and Validation of the General Charisma Inventory
No full textAlthough both scholars and lay people are fascinated with charismatic individuals, relatively few theorists have attempted to define charisma. Much of the empirical research examining charisma has been concerned with the study of leadership. Even within that literature, however, theorists have focused on charismaâ s outcomes, leaving unarticulated precisely what charisma is. Here, I tested a new operational conceptualization of charisma in the context of everyday life. Specifically, I proposed that charisma is composed of the interpersonally-focused dimensions of influence and affability. I validated this conceptualization in a series of studies, demonstrating (i) that lay people possess a consensual idea of charisma; (ii) that charisma consists of two quantifiable dimensions, influence and affability; (iii) that charisma is distinct from other constructs of interest to psychologists and leadership theorists; (iv) that charisma is observable; and, finally, (v) that assessments of charisma predict important real world outcomes, such as persuasion and liking. These studies, therefore, provide a new, comprehensive contextualization of charisma that extends beyond the study of formal leadership. Furthermore, the current work highlights that charisma is a relevant construct to leaders and laypeople alike. Thus, this research not only attempts to conceptualize and measure charisma but also demonstrates that charisma might be important to people every day.Ph.D.2018-07-08 00:00:0
Investigating the Pervasiveness of Social Class Cues in the Face
No full textPrevious research demonstrates the visibility of social class from the face, as cued by differences in resting facial affect in neutral faces and differences in attractiveness in dating profile photos. This research, however, operationalized social class using only one measure: income. Social class standing consists of various related facets in addition to income, however, including education, occupational prestige, and subjective social class. It therefore remains unknown whether accurate perceptions of social class are specific to income, or whether the face reflects social class more generally. To address this gap, I tested the visibility of social class in two stimulus sets, standardized photos of Canadian undergraduates and yearbook photos of Icelandic secondary school graduates, each of which defined social class somewhat differently. Previous work on the visibility of social class from the face furthermore focused only on whether perceivers could distinguish those of higher class from those of lower class, leaving unclear whether greater nuance in social class standing might be detectable from the face. To explore this question, I used more detailed measures of targets’ social class and asked perceivers to make judgments along multi-point scales. Extant work moreover only demonstrates the visibility of social class background, but other research on predictive judgments from the face (e.g., career success) suggests that the face may hold hints of future class standing—I tested this possibility here. Finally, the current work tested whether the facial cues to social class were consistent across economic context, photo type, and time. My findings indicate that facial appearance reflects the underlying construct of social class (rather than just certain facets of class) and does so in a graded manner, with different degrees of social class standing discernable from the face. Across both stimulus sets, greater Positivity (affect and warmth) and Attractiveness (attractiveness, competence, and health) cued higher background social class standing, suggesting that social class impacts appearance similarly across economic contexts. The cues to future social class diverged from this, however. Overall, this work provides a clearer idea of the relationship between social class standing and facial appearance.Ph.D
The Face of a Nation: The Effect of Nationality on Face Memory and Perception
No full textNationality is a pervasive group membership, and previous research has variously demonstrated its potency. However, little work has investigated nationality’s relationship with person perception, an area ripe for research in today’s globalized world. Thus, the aim of this thesis was to understand how nationality affects one’s perception and memory of others. I tested how randomly pairing faces with Canadian and foreign flags affected Canadians’ memory and trait evaluations for these faces and whether nationalism predicted ingroup favouritism. I also compared memory differences for ostensible national ingroup and outgroup members to that for university ingroup and outgroup members to determine the relative importance and strength of nationality over other social identities. Across three studies, I found that Canadian participants recognized faces randomly paired with the Canadian flag better than those paired with a foreign flag, suggesting that nationality labels can affect memory for others, which has important implications for cross-national interactions.M.A
On the Competing Roles of Attractiveness and Group Membership in Person Evaluations
No full textIndividual preferences notwithstanding, studies on physical attractiveness have suggested that people largely agree about others’ attractiveness and favor attractive individuals. Though this attractiveness halo represents one of the strongest influences over social behavior, psychological literature has documented other robust biases as well. For instance, favoritism towards members of one’s own group guide much of a person’s thoughts and actions. Here, I investigated what happens when these two biases collide by examining how attractiveness affects implicit and explicit evaluations of ingroup and outgroup members. I hypothesized that group membership biases would cede to attractiveness biases; participants would prefer attractive individuals irrespective of group membership. However, whereas the results of Implicit Association Tests showed that participants’ evaluations of ingroup and outgroup targets differed more by group membership, semantic differential scales showed that explicit evaluations differed more by attractiveness levels. A person’s attractiveness and group membership therefore seem to separately affect others’ evaluations.M.A.2019-11-06 00:00:0
Testing the Sensorimotor Fluency Account of Mimicry
No full textMimicry is a pervasive and ubiquitous human behaviour with generally positive consequences, resulting in increased liking, closeness, and smoothness between interaction partners. Whereas previous research has stressed the affiliative aspect of these consequences, recent research suggests that these consequences may also arise because of the sensorimotor fluency with which mimicry is achieved. I tested three key hypotheses of this model in two experiments and found no support for a sensorimotor fluency account of mimicry. Implications of this research are discussed.M.A
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