Configural Face Processing and Prejudice Regulation

非人化——拒绝给予他人充分的人性——是虐待他人的主要诱因。当其他人被非人化时，他们往往会受到攻击，经历歧视，甚至其他人对他们的痛苦视而不见。在目前的研究中，迈阿密大学的库尔特·休根伯格（Kurt Hugenberg）和他的同事将研究可能导致他人失去人性的面部信号。过去的研究表明，人脸通常是被构造处理的。也就是说，不是单独检查面部的特定特征（眼睛，鼻子），而是将面部特征自发地“组合在一起”并作为一个整体进行处理。这项工作将调查对面部执行这种配置处理的失败是否会引发非人性化。本研究将1)弥合知觉心理学和社会心理学之间的界限，2)扩展我们对非人性化背后的知觉机制的有限理解，3)回答有关非人性化的前因和影响以及面部加工的可塑性的深层问题。非人化在群体间冲突、不公正和歧视中起着关键作用。了解判断人性的机制是解决非人性化的原因和后果的必要下一步。本研究将在3个研究方向的10个实验中探索人性归属与构形面部处理之间的关系。第一项工作可能会提供新的证据，证明面部结构处理是人类的一个线索，面部结构处理使人脸看起来更像人类，而面部结构处理的中断可能会引发非人性化。其次，使用行为和神经科学（ERP）技术，本工作将研究增加人性属性是否会增加构形脸处理的程度。第三，本研究将寻求将构型面部加工和非人性化的研究结果扩展到偏见调节领域。然而，偏见的激活可以简单地从种族典型的面部特征中产生，而控制偏见的动机可以通过体验一张完全人性化的脸来触发。因此，这第三条工作将证明偏见激活和偏见调节是可分离的，因此前者可以由种族典型特征单独触发，后者可以通过配置处理触发。这一知识可能会导致新的策略的发展，以有效地减少偏见和歧视。

Dehumanization - the denial of full humanness to others - is a key trigger for mistreating other people. When others are dehumanized, they are often subjected to aggression, experience discrimination, and others even become blind to their pain. In the current research, Kurt Hugenberg (Miami University) and colleagues will examine the facial signals that can lead to dehumanization of others. Past research has shown that human faces are normally processed configurally. That is, rather than examining specific features (the eyes, the nose) of the face separately, the features of a face are spontaneously "grouped together" and processed as a whole. This work will investigate whether a failure to perform this configural processing for a face may trigger dehumanization. This proposed research will 1) bridge the boundary between perceptual and social psychology, 2) expand our limited understanding of the perceptual mechanisms underlying dehumanization, and 3) answer deep questions about both the antecedents and effects of dehumanization and the malleability of face processing. Dehumanization plays a key role in intergroup conflict, injustice, and discrimination. Understanding the mechanisms underlying judgments of humanness is a necessary next step to addressing the causes and consequences of dehumanization.The proposed studies will explore the relationships between ascribing humanity and configural face processing in 10 experiments across 3 lines of research. The first line of work may provide novel evidence that configural face processing is a cue for humanity, with configurally processed faces making human faces seem more human, and that disruptions of configural processing may trigger dehumanization. Second, using both behavioral and neuroscience (ERP) techniques, this work will investigate whether increasing ascriptions of humanity can increase the extent of configural face processing. Third, the current research will seek to extend the findings regarding configural face processing and dehumanization to the domain of prejudice regulation. Whereas the activation of prejudice can occur simply from race-typical facial features, the motivation to control prejudice could be triggered by experiencing a face as fully human. Thus, this third line of work will demonstrate that prejudice activation and prejudice regulation are dissociable, such that the former can be triggered by race-typical features alone, and the latter via configural processing. This knowledge could lead to the development of novel strategies to effectively reduce prejudice and discrimination.