title: More Than Meets the Eye: Split-Second Social Perception.
abstract: Recent research suggests that visual perception of social categories is shaped not only by facial features but also by higher-order social cognitive processes (e.g., stereotypes, attitudes, goals). Building on neural computational models of social perception, we outline a perspective of how multiple bottom-up visual cues are flexibly integrated with a range of top-down processes to form perceptions, and we identify a set of key brain regions involved. During this integration, 'hidden' social category activations are often triggered which temporarily impact perception without manifesting in explicit perceptual judgments. Importantly, these hidden impacts and other aspects of the perceptual process predict downstream social consequences - from politicians' electoral success to several evaluative biases - independently of the outcomes of that process.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA. Electronic address: jon.freeman@nyu.edu.
authors.forename: Jonathan B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Freeman
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Studies and Psychology, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
authors.forename: Kerri L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D019295:Computational Biology; D003210:Concept Formation; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D013240:Stereotyping; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: computational models; face processing; neuroimaging; person perception; stereotypes; top-down effects