Stereotypes and prejudice affect the recognition of emotional body postures.

Most research on emotion recognition focuses on facial expressions. However, people communicate emotional information through bodily cues as well. Prior research on facial expressions has demonstrated that emotion recognition is modulated by top-down processes.

For Your Local Eyes Only: Culture-Specific Face Typicality Influences Perceptions of Trustworthiness.

Recent findings show that typical faces are judged as more trustworthy than atypical faces. However, it is not clear whether employment of typicality cues in trustworthiness judgment happens across cultures and if these cues are culture specific. In two studies, conducted in Japan and Israel, participants judged trustworthiness and attractiveness of faces.

Do we spontaneously form stable trustworthiness impressions from facial appearance?

It is widely assumed among psychologists that people spontaneously form trustworthiness impressions of newly encountered people from their facial appearance. However, most existing studies directly or indirectly induced an impression formation goal, which means that the existing empirical support for spontaneous facial trustworthiness impressions remains insufficient. In particular, it remains an open question whether trustworthiness from facial appearance is encoded in memory.

Disentangling neural processes of egocentric and allocentric mental spatial transformations using whole-body photos of self and other.

Mental imagery of one's body moving through space is important for imagining changing visuospatial perspectives, as well as for determining how we might appear to other people. Previous neuroimaging research has implicated the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) in this process. It is unclear, however, how neural activity in the TPJ relates to the rotation perspectives from which mental spatial transformation (MST) of one's own body can take place, i.

What is typical is good: the influence of face typicality on perceived trustworthiness.

The role of face typicality in face recognition is well established, but it is unclear whether face typicality is important for face evaluation. Prior studies have focused mainly on typicality's influence on attractiveness, although recent studies have cast doubt on its importance for attractiveness judgments. Here, we argue that face typicality is an important factor for social perception because it affects trustworthiness judgments, which approximate the basic evaluation of faces.

Visualizing minimal ingroup and outgroup faces: implications for impressions, attitudes, and behavior.

More than 40 years of research have shown that people favor members of their ingroup in their impressions, attitudes, and behaviors. Here, we propose that people also form different mental images of minimal ingroup and outgroup members, and we test the hypothesis that differences in these mental images contribute to the well-established biases that arise from minimal group categorization. In Study 1, participants were assigned to 1 of 2 groups using a classic minimal group paradigm.

Stereotype associations and emotion recognition.

We investigated whether stereotype associations between specific emotional expressions and social categories underlie stereotypic emotion recognition biases. Across two studies, we replicated previously documented stereotype biases in emotion recognition using both dynamic (Study 1) and static (Study 2) expression displays. Stereotype consistent expressions were more quickly decoded than stereotype inconsistent expression on Moroccan and White male faces.

Return behavior of occasional and multigallon blood donors: the role of theory of planned behavior, self-identity, and organizational variables.

Background: For blood establishments it is important that blood donors return for a donation. Past research has stressed the importance of theory of planned behavior (TPB) on return behavior, but self-identity (SI) and organizational variables (OVs) might play a role as well. This study added SI and OVs to the TPB to identify the determinants for return behavior.

Characteristics of donors who do or do not return to give blood and barriers to their return.

Background: In the Netherlands about 50% of whole blood donors return to give blood after an invitation to donate. This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of donor return behaviour and to gain insight into the barriers to blood donation reported by the donors themselves.

Materials And Methods: A total of 4,901 whole blood donors were invited to donate in week 39 of 2009.

Thinking big: the effect of sexually objectifying music videos on bodily self-perception in young women.

The present study investigated the effect of sexually objectifying music video exposure on young women's implicit bodily self-perception and the moderating role of self-esteem. Fifty-six college women of normal weight were either exposed to three sexually objectifying music videos or three neutral music videos. Perceived and ideal body size were measured both before and after video exposure, using horizontally stretched and compressed photographs of the participant's own body in swimming garment.

Facing Europe: visualizing spontaneous in-group projection.

Individuals perceive their own group to be more typical of a shared superordinate identity than other groups are. This in-group projection process has been demonstrated with both self-report and indirect measures. The two studies reported here extend this research to the visual level, specifically, within the domain of faces.

How the human brain goes virtual: distinct cortical regions of the person-processing network are involved in self-identification with virtual agents.

Millions of people worldwide engage in online role-playing with their avatar, a virtual agent that represents the self. Previous behavioral studies have indicated that many gamers identify more strongly with their avatar than with their biological self. Through their avatar, gamers develop social networks and learn new social-cognitive skills.

Costs and benefits of autonomy when learning a task: an experimental approach.

Previous findings suggested that the positive relationship between autonomy and learning outcomes (such as improved task performance) only holds up until a certain optimum level of autonomy has been reached. This assumption was investigated in an experimental study where 95 participants had to learn a computer task. During the learning phase, we manipulated autonomy, distinguishing among no, moderate, and full autonomy.

Biased allocation of faces to social categories.

Three studies show that social categorization is biased at the level of category allocation. In all studies, participants categorized faces. In Studies 1 and 2, participants overallocated faces with criminal features--a stereotypical negative trait--to the stigmatized Moroccan category, especially if they were prejudiced.

How can you resist? Executive control helps romantically involved individuals to stay faithful.

In the present research, we examined why some people have more difficulty than others in staying faithful to their romantic partners. Three studies supported our main prediction that executive control is associated with romantically involved individuals' ability to stay faithful. Study 1 showed that participants with a higher level of executive control reported less difficulty in staying faithful to their partners than did those with lower levels of executive control.

The negation bias: when negations signal stereotypic expectancies.

Research on linguistic biases shows that stereotypic expectancies are implicitly reflected in language and are thereby subtly communicated to message recipients. We examined whether these findings extend to the use of negations (e.g.

From task characteristics to learning: A systematic review.

Although many theoretical approaches propose that job characteristics affect employee learning, the question is why and how job characteristics influence learning. The present study reviews the evidence on the relationships among learning antecedents (i.e.

What it takes to forgive: When and why executive functioning facilitates forgiveness.

To establish what it takes to forgive, the present research focused on the cognitive underpinnings of the forgiveness process. We conducted four studies that examined and supported the prediction that executive functioning (a set of cognitive control processes) facilitates forgiveness. First, a correlational study revealed a positive relation between executive functioning and dispositional forgiveness (Study 1).

Biased language use in stereotype maintenance: the role of encoding and goals.

In 4 studies, the authors investigated the relative impact of biased encoding of information and communication goals on biased language use. A category label (linguistic expectancy bias, Study 1) or a group label (linguistic intergroup bias, Study 2) was presented either before or after a story that participants were asked to communicate. Biased language use only emerged when participants learned about the group membership of the actor or the category label before hearing the story.

When stereotypes get in the way: stereotypes obstruct stereotype-inconsistent trait inferences.

There is a growing body of evidence indicating that people spontaneously make trait inferences while observing the behavior of others. The present article reports a series of 5 experiments that examined the influence of stereotypes on the spontaneous inference of traits. Results consistently showed weaker spontaneous trait inferences for stereotype-inconsistent behavioral information than for stereotype-consistent and stereotype-neutral information.