Person Memory Mechanism Underlying Approach and Avoidance Judgments of Social Targets

People display approach and avoidance tendencies toward social targets. Although much research has studied the factors that affect decisions to approach or avoid targets, less work has investigated whether cognitive factors, such as episodic memory (e.g., details remembered about others from previous encounters) contribute to such judgments. Across two experiments, participants formed positive or negative impressions of targets based on their picture, a trait-implying behavior (Experiments 1 & 2), and their political ideology (conservative or liberal; Experiment 2). Memory and approach/avoidance decisions for targets were then measured. Results showed remembering negative impressions about targets increased avoidance responses, whereas remembering positive impressions increased approach responses. Strikingly, falsely remembering negative impressions for novel social targets (not seen before) also induced avoidance. Results suggest remembering negative information about targets, whether correctly or falsely, strongly influences future social judgments. Overall, these data support an episodic memory mechanism underlying subsequent approach/avoidance judgments, which is a rich area for future research.

Psychology’s Stewardship of Gender/Sex

Psychological theories of gender and/or sex (gender/sex) have the capacity to shape people’s self-perceptions, social judgments, and behaviors. The institutional power of psychology to affect cognition and behavior—not just to measure them—necessitates a serious consideration of our social responsibility to manage the products of our intellectual labor. Therefore, I propose that psychological research should be understood as stewardship of gender/sex (and socially relevant concepts in general). In this issue, four articles collectively serve as a demonstrative slice of the diversity of current directions in psychological research on gender/sex. I use these articles as springboards for articulating key elements of psychologists’ stewardship of gender/sex and strategies for improving our stewardship. First, I examine how psychology’s historical stewardship of gender/sex has yielded both new methods for self-understanding and harmful consequences for marginalized people. Next, I explore promising current approaches that center minoritized perspectives. I also discuss roadblocks to effective stewardship, including narrowly disciplinary approaches. Finally, I consider strategies for improving psychology’s stewardship of gender/sex, such as mitigating gender/sex essentialism and employing generative theoretical frameworks built from interdisciplinary insights.

Interoceptive ability moderates the effect of physiological reactivity on social judgment

Social judgments—that others are kind or cruel, well-intentioned or conniving—can ease or disrupt social interactions. And yet a person’s internal state can color these judgments—a phenomenon known as affective realism. We examined the factors that contribute to, and mitigate, affective realism during a stressful interview. We hypothesized and found that individuals’ (N=161) ability to accurately perceive their own internal sensations influenced whether they attributed their own heightened stress reactions (i.e., sympathetic nervous system reactivity) to the behavior of two impassive interviewers. Participants who were poor heartbeat detectors perceived the interviewers as less helpful, polite, or professional, and more apathetic, judgmental, and aggressive when experiencing high levels of sympathetic nervous system reactivity during their interview. Being aware of one’s internal state may be one pathway to more accurate, adaptive social interactions.

Effects of Face Masks on Person Perception

As face masks have become more commonplace in many regions due to COVID-19, concerns have been raised about their effects on the perception of mask wearers and social cohesion more broadly, including racial profiling. In two studies we examined the effects of masks on social judgments of mask wearers, and whether masks have different effects on judgments of Black and White faces. Participants rated 20 Black and 20 White faces with and without masks on trustworthiness/approachability (Studies 1 and 2) and on dominance/competence and attractiveness (Study 2). In both studies masks increased perceived trustworthiness and reduced the effect of face race on judgments. Masks also increased perceived attractiveness, but had no effect on the perception of dominance/competence. Overall, this study found no negative effects of face masks on judgments of mask wearers, though further research is needed.

A Cautionary Note on Predicting Social Judgments from Faces with Deep Neural Networks

People spontaneously infer other people’s psychology from faces, encompassing inferences of their affective states, cognitive states, and stable traits such as personality. These judgments are known to be often invalid, but nonetheless bias many social decisions. Their importance and ubiquity have made them popular targets for automated prediction using deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs). Here, we investigated the applicability of this approach: how well does it generalize, and what biases does it introduce? We compared three distinct sets of features (from a face identification DCNN, an object recognition DCNN, and using facial geometry), and tested their prediction across multiple out-of-sample datasets. Across judgments and datasets, features from both pre-trained DCNNs provided better predictions than did facial geometry. However, predictions using object recognition DCNN features were not robust to superficial cues (e.g., color and hair style). Importantly, predictions using face identification DCNN features were not specific: models trained to predict one social judgment (e.g., trustworthiness) also significantly predicted other social judgments (e.g., femininity and criminal), and at an even higher accuracy in some cases than predicting the judgment of interest (e.g., trustworthiness). Models trained to predict affective states (e.g., happy) also significantly predicted judgments of stable traits (e.g., sociable), and vice versa. Our analysis pipeline not only provides a flexible and efficient framework for predicting affective and social judgments from faces but also highlights the dangers of such automated predictions: correlated but unintended judgments can drive the predictions of the intended judgments.

How Disgust Affects Social Judgments

The emotion of disgust has been claimed to affect a diverse array of social judgments, including moral condemnation, inter-group prejudice, political ideology, and much more. We attempt to make sense of this large and varied literature by reviewing the theory and research on how and why disgust influences these judgments. We first describe two very different perspectives adopted by researchers on why disgust should affect social judgment. The first is the pathogen-avoidance account, which sees the relationship between disgust and judgment as resulting from disgust’s evolved function as a pathogen-avoidance mechanism. The second is the extended disgust account, which posits that disgust functions much more broadly to address a range of other threats and challenges. We then review the empirical evidence to assess how well it supports each of these perspectives, arguing that there is more support for the pathogen-avoidance account than the extended account. We conclude with some testable empirical predictions that can better distinguish between these two perspectives.

Social Judgments, Social Media, and Self-Deprecation

Two experiments examined how perceivers evaluated target individuals based on minimal information as presented in a typical social media post and whether inferences varied as a function of information source (self vs. other) and valence (positive vs. negative). Across experiments, results indicated that targets were: (a) less likely to be rated with traits consistent with behavior and (b) perceived less favorably when positive behavior information was self-generated than when the same information was other-generated. The inclusion of self-deprecating hashtags reduced the source effect of positive information by reducing perceived arrogance and increasing perceived sense of humor of target individuals. Together, these experiments provide greater understanding of the influence of information source, valence, and self-deprecation on trait and favorability judgments in a social media context.