Diagnostic value underlies asymmetric updating of impressions in the morality and ability domains.

While positive behavioral information is diagnostic when evaluating a person's abilities, negative information is diagnostic when evaluating morality. Although social psychology has considered these two domains as orthogonal and distinct from one another, we demonstrate that this asymmetry in diagnosticity can be explained by a single parsimonious principle--the perceived frequency of behaviors in these domains. Less frequent behaviors (e.

Evidence for conceptual combination in the left anterior temporal lobe.

Conceptual combination allows for the construction of an infinite number of complex ideas from a finite base. The anterior temporal lobes appear to be important for the process of conceptual combination. In a previous study (Baron et al.

Amygdala and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex responses to appearance-based and behavior-based person impressions.

We explored the neural correlates of learning about people when the affective value of both facial appearance and behavioral information is manipulated. Participants were presented with faces that were either rated as high or low on trustworthiness. Subsequently, we paired these faces with positive, negative, or no behavioral information.

An early stage of conceptual combination: Superimposition of constituent concepts in left anterolateral temporal lobe.

Conceptual combination is an essential cognitive process, yet little is known about its neural correlates. In the present study, a categorization task was used to evoke patterns of neural activation for complex concepts (e.g.

Evaluating face trustworthiness: a model based approach.

Judgments of trustworthiness from faces determine basic approach/avoidance responses and approximate the valence evaluation of faces that runs across multiple person judgments. Here, based on trustworthiness judgments and using a computer model for face representation, we built a model for representing face trustworthiness (study 1). Using this model, we generated novel faces with an increased range of trustworthiness and used these faces as stimuli in a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study (study 2).

Nonlinear amygdala response to face trustworthiness: contributions of high and low spatial frequency information.

Previous neuroimaging research has shown amygdala sensitivity to the perceived trustworthiness of neutral faces, with greater responses to untrustworthy compared with trustworthy faces. This observation is consistent with the common view that the amygdala encodes fear and is preferentially responsive to negative stimuli. However, some studies have shown greater amygdala activation to positive compared with neutral stimuli.