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Neuroimaging of person perception: A social-visual interface
Jeffrey A Brooks1, Jonathan B Freeman1
1Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, United States.
Neuroscience Letters
|December 25, 2017
Summary
Social cognition, including stereotypes and prejudice, significantly shapes how we perceive faces. This top-down influence affects facial feature perception and can lead to biases in how we view others.
Area of Science:
- Social neuroscience
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Visual perception
Background:
- The human visual system extracts extensive social information from faces.
- Facial perception is influenced by both facial features and higher-order social cognitive factors.
- Social cognitive factors like stereotypes and prejudice can bias face perception.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review how top-down social cognitive factors influence visual perception of facial features.
- To explore the role of social cognition in shaping face perception and intergroup biases.
- To integrate findings from social neuroscience with cognitive neuroscience and visual cognition.
Main Methods:
- Review of neuroimaging evidence.
- Integration of research on predictive coding and perceptual priors.
- Examination of the social-visual interface.
Main Results:
- Top-down social cognitive processes rapidly integrate with visual perception.
- This integration can lead to systematic biases in face perception.
- Social cognitive factors mediate intergroup behavioral and evaluative biases.
Conclusions:
- Social cognition profoundly impacts visual perception of faces.
- Domain-general mechanisms underlie the social-visual interface.
- Understanding this interface is crucial for explaining social biases.
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