Face Overgeneralization, Prejudice, and Stereotypes

描述（由申请人提供）：相当多的研究表明，在形成第一印象时，人们倾向于使用面部外观。此外，这些印象显示出显著的共识，产生了重大的社会后果。拟议研究的长期目标是解释双方同意的面孔第一印象，并制定改善其负面社会后果的方法。工作假设是，通过标记婴儿、不健康、情感或身份的功能显著面部特征准确揭示的心理品质，被过度概括为面部结构与婴儿、特定健康水平、特定情感或特定身份相似的人。这项研究有三个具体目标。一种是使用连接主义模型来测试面部身份过度概括假设，即对陌生人的反应随着他们与已知个体的面部相似度的变化而变化的趋势会导致种族偏见和刻板印象。联结主义建模实验试图证明，两张脸之间的物理相似性本身可以解释对它们的相似印象，而不是脸的社会类别的相似性。第二个目的是测试广义的单纯暴露效应是否可以用来减少种族和年龄偏见和刻板印象，正如面部身份过度概括假说所预测的那样。单纯暴露实验试图证明，增加对外群体面部原型的熟悉程度将减少对外群体成员的负面反应。第三个目标是使用功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）来研究神经激活模式，以响应从三个过度概括假设中预测的面部。fMRI实验试图确定，在连接主义建模实验中，通过人类法官的评分和它们引发的激活来区分的面孔类别是否也会引发不同的神经激活模式，从而证明过度泛化效应的神经基础。通过关注影响偏见和刻板印象的结构化面部信息，本研究为社会认知领域带来了新的理论视角，表明面部的内在属性对社会偏见有重要贡献，而社会偏见在很大程度上被视为社会建构。它还提出了减少偏见的新干预措施。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Considerable research demonstrates a strong tendency to use facial appearance when forming first impressions. Moreover, these impressions show remarkable consensus, yielding significant social consequences. The long-range objective of the proposed research is to explain consensual first impressions of faces and to develop methods for ameliorating their negative social consequences. The working hypothesis is that the psychological qualities that are accurately revealed by the functionally significant facial qualities that mark babies, unfitness, emotion, or identity are overgeneralized to people whose facial structure resembles that of babies, a particular level of fitness, a particular emotion, or a particular identity. The research has three specific aims. One is to use connectionist modeling to test the facial identity overgeneralization hypothesis that the tendency for responses to strangers to vary with their facial resemblance to known individuals contributes to racial prejudice and stereotyping. The connectionist modeling experiments seek to demonstrate that the physical similarity between two faces can in and of itself account for similar impressions of them quite apart from similarities in the social categories of the faces. The second aim is to test whether generalized mere exposure effects can be used to reduce race and age prejudice and stereotyping, as predicted by the facial identity overgeneralization hypothesis. The mere exposure experiments seek to demonstrate that increasing the familiarity of an out-group facial prototype will decrease negative reactions to out-group members. The third aim is to use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to investigate neural activation patterns in response to faces that are predicted from each of the three overgeneralization hypotheses. The fMRI experiments seek to determine whether categories of faces that are differentiated by human judges' ratings and by the activation they elicit in connectionist modeling experiments also elicit distinct patterns of neural activation, thereby demonstrating a neural substrate for the overgeneralization effects. By focusing on the structured facial information that influences prejudice and stereotypes, the proposed research brings a novel theoretical perspective to the field of social cognition, demonstrating that the intrinsic properties of faces make a significant contribution to social biases that have been largely viewed as social constructions. It also suggests novel interventions for reducing prejudice.