Comprehensive investigation on social inference and learning: Basic and applied studies focusing on their interactions

本研究项目主要由四项研究组成，分别考察了社会推理和学习。主要发现可以概括为以下两点。(1)人们倾向于从别人的脸来判断他们的社交特征，比如可信度和支配性。这种社会推理的结论在不同的人中是相似的，但它们是不准确的(研究1和2)。(2)通过学习一个人的声誉，可以更新一个人的可信性印象，这种印象最初是由他的外表形成的。特别是，坏名声的影响是如此强烈，即使在名声被证明是武断的之后，它仍然存在(研究3)。与情感相关的大脑区域的活动涉及这种持久的不信任(研究4)。这些发现可以说对理解社会推理和学习的机制和特点有很大的帮助。

This research project mainly consisted of four studies investigating social inference and learning. Major findings can be summarized into the following two points. (1) People tend to judge others' social traits like trustworthiness and dominance from their faces. Conclusions from such social inference are similar among different people, but they are inaccurate (Studies 1 and 2). (2) Trustworthiness impression of a given person, which is initially formed by their facial appearance, can be updated by learning their reputation. In particular, the effect of bad reputation is so strong that it persists even after the reputation turns out to be arbitrary (Study 3). The activity of affect-related brain regions involves such persisting distrust (Study 4). These findings can be said to greatly contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms and characteristics of social inference and learning.