Research in our lab focuses on how perceivers' stereotypes, prejudices, and prejudice-related motives influence how we categorize, perceive, and understand others. Much of the work we do has a particular focus on how perceptions of others' faces and bodies interface with beliefs about social groups.
Research Topics:
- Social Cognition
- Stereotyping and Prejudice
- Face Perception and Person Perception
Our laboratory focuses on the intersection of person perception, intergroup relations, and face perception. What makes a group stereotyped as angry? How do stereotypes influence who seems to be lying or telling the truth? What makes a face seem more or less human? In particular, we ask questions about how perceivers’ top-down beliefs about others (e.g., stereotypes, prejudice) influence how we interpret others’ behavior (e.g., how we read their non-verbals, how we detect their lies). We also ask how bottom-up cues from others’ faces and bodies (e.g., facial width-to-height ratio, body size) influence our beliefs about others (e.g., who is seen as good versus bad? As sophisticated versus simplistic?).
In one ongoing line of research, we have been investigating how we use cues in others faces and bodies to make inferences about their minds.
In a second line of ongoing research, we have investigated how social categories, and their attendant stereotypes, prejudices, and motives, can bias or distort how we read others’ non-verbal behavior.
