David J. Lick’s research while affiliated with Google Inc. and other places

Previous research has examined the real-time cognitive processes underlying perceivers’ ability to resolve racial ambiguity into monoracial categorizations, but such processes for multiracial categorizations are less clear. Using a novel, three-choice mouse-tracking paradigm, we found that when perceivers categorized faces as multiracial their hand movements revealed an initial attraction to a monoracial category (study 1). Moreover, exposure to multiracial individuals moderated these effects. When measured (Study 2) or manipulated (Study 3), multiracial exposure reduced monoracial category activation and activation occurred for both morphed and real multiracial faces (Study 4). Together, the findings suggest that multiracial categorizations emerge from dynamic competition between relatively more accessible monoracial categories and a less-accessible multiracial category, which is attenuated through greater exposure to multiracial targets. This research is the first to chart out the real-time dynamics underlying multiracial categorizations and offers a new theoretical account of this increasingly common form of social categorization.

People form social evaluations of others following brief exposure to their voices, and these impressions are calibrated based on recent perceptual experience. Participants adapted to voices with fundamental frequency (f o; the acoustic correlate of perceptual pitch) manipulated to be gender-typical (i.e. masculine men and feminine women) or gender-atypical (i.e. feminine men and masculine women) before evaluating unaltered test voices within the same sex. Adaptation resulted in contrastive aftereffects. Listening to gender-atypical voices caused female voices to sound more feminine and attractive (Study 1) and male voices to sound more masculine and attractive (Study 2). Studies 3a and 3b tested whether adaptation occurred on a conceptual or perceptual level, respectively. In Study 3a, perceivers adapted to gender-typical or gender-atypical voices for both men and women (i.e. adaptors pitch manipulated in opposite directions for men and women) before evaluating unaltered test voices. Findings showed weak evidence that evaluations differed between conditions. In Study 3b, perceivers adapted to masculinized or feminized voices for both men and women (i.e. adaptors pitch manipulated in the same direction for men and women) before evaluating unaltered test voices. In the feminized condition, participants rated male targets as more masculine and attractive. Conversely, in the masculinized condition, participants rated female targets as more feminine and attractive. Voices appear to be evaluated according to gender norms that are updated based on perceptual experience as well as conceptual knowledge.

For 70 years, the field of social perception has concluded that perceivers can determine others' social category memberships with remarkable accuracy. However, it has become increasingly clear that accuracy is only part of the story, as social category judgments are often systematically biased toward one category over another. For example, when categorizing sexual orientation, perceivers label others as straight more often than gay. This straight categorization bias is reliable, has an effect size larger than that for accuracy, and is not exclusively driven by the low base rate of sexual minorities in the population, yet we know little about its proximal causes. Here, we argue that one facet of this bias is a motivated reasoning process that avoids applying stigmatizing labels to unknown others. Specifically, we propose that perceivers ascribe heavy consequences to incorrect gay categorizations, compelling them to gather and integrate available information in a manner that favors straight categorizations. Studies 1 and 2 tested the dynamic nature of the bias, exploring decision ambivalence and the real-time accrual of visible evidence about a target throughout the perceptual process using mouse-tracking and diffusion modeling. Studies 3-5 tested motivational determinants for the bias, revealing that perceivers associate high costs with incorrect gay categorizations because those errors put other people in harm's way. Studies 6-9 tested the cognitive mechanisms perceivers engage as they search for information that allows them to avoid costly decision errors. Collectively, these studies provide a new framework for understanding a well-documented but poorly understood response bias in social categorization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Body weight is a critical dimension by which we evaluate others, with heavier individuals facing higher levels of stigma and discrimination compared to thinner individuals. Yet, the perception of body weight can be ambiguous, suggesting that stereotypic associations and heuristics influence which bodies are deemed as "typical" for a particular group or social category. Here, we investigate whether interdependent associations between body weight and social category dimensions (ethnicity, gender, age, and sex) affect the typicality ratings of a heavier body. Specifically, we hypothesize that heavier bodies labelled as Asian, feminine, younger, or female, compared to Black, White, masculine, older, or male, will be rated less typical and these typicality judgments will mediate social evaluations. Participants made typicality and social evaluative judgments about a wireframe body with a set BMI of 38, accompanied by one of sixteen category labels (e.g., Asian man). Our results show that typicality judgments broadly align with our hypotheses and mediate social evaluations of the heavier body. Overall, we showcase the interdependent nature of weight and other social categories, highlighting the role of typicality for social evaluations of heavier targets.

Human observers extract perceptual summaries for sets of items after brief visual exposure, accurately judging the average size of geometric shapes (Ariely, 2001), walking direction of a crowd (Sweeny, Haroz, & Whitney, 2013), and the eye gaze of groups of faces (Sweeny & Whitney, 2014). In addition to such actuarial summaries, we hypothesize that observers also extract social information about groups that may influence downstream judgments and behavior. In four studies, we first show that humans quickly and accurately perceive the sex ratio of a group after only 500 ms of visual exposure. We then test whether these percepts bias judgments about the group's social attitudes and affect the perceiver's sense of belonging. As the ratio of men to women increased, both male and female perceivers judged the group to harbor more sexist norms, and judgments of belonging changed concomitantly, albeit in opposite directions for men and women. Thus, observers judge a group's sex ratio from a mere glimpse and use it to infer social attitudes and interpersonal affordances. We discuss the implication of these findings for a heretofore overlooked hurtle facing women in male-dominated fields (e.g., science, technology, engineering, or mathematics): how the ratio of men to women provides an early visible cue that signals an individual's potential fit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The growing multiracial population and the emergent body of research examining how we categorize this population highlights the complexity and malleability inherent in racial categorization. Few studies, however, have examined how categorization of multiracial targets as biracial (rather than a presumed monoracial category) differs across different geographic contexts or how perceivers categorize multiracial minority targets (i.e., those who are not part White). Here, we examined malleability in racial categorizations of Black-White, Asian-White, and Asian-Black faces across two geographic contexts: Hawai'i and California. We found that perceivers (in Hawai'i in Study 1; in both contexts in Study 2) categorized Black-White faces most often as biracial, followed by Asian-Black faces, and then Asian-White faces. Moreover, those who lived in a geographic context with a large biracial population (Hawai'i) categorized multiracial targets as biracial more often than those who lived in a majority White context (California).

Social identities are inherently intersectional, and some of these intersections bias social perception. For example, overlapping stereotypes about race and gender categories enable perceivers to efficiently judge Black targets as male and Asian targets as female. Here, we extend these intersections to a third fundamental social category dimension-age. Two studies revealed that facial cues to race and gender interactively guide age judgments, such that Black targets are judged to be masculine and therefore older whereas Asian targets judged to be feminine and therefore younger than age-matched White controls. These effects were most pronounced for male targets, which is consistent with affordance theories proposing that intersecting race, gender, and age cues are particularly salient for men due to stereotypical associations with threat. Collectively, the present findings provide new theoretical information and highlight future research directions related to intersectional categories in social perception.

Everyday, we visually perceive people not only in isolation but also in groups. Yet, visual person perception research typically focuses on inferences made about isolated individuals. By integrating social vision and visual ensemble coding, we present novel evidence that (a) perceivers rapidly (500 ms) extract a group’s ratio of men to women and (b) both explicit judgments of threat and indirect evaluative priming of threat increase as the ratio of men to women in a group increases. Furthermore, participants’ estimates of the number of men, and not perceived men’s coalition, mediate the relationship between the ratio of men to women and threat judgments. These findings demonstrate the remarkable efficiency of perceiving a group’s sex ratio and downstream evaluative inferences made from these percepts. Overall, this work advances person perception research into the novel domain of people perception, revealing how the visually perceived sex ratio of groups impacts social judgments.

Throughout the world, groups that are socially disadvantaged have poorer health compared to groups that are more advantaged. This book examines the role that stigma and discrimination play in creating and sustaining these group health disparities. Stigma is a social construction in which people who are distinguished by a “mark” are viewed as deviant, socially excluded, and devalued. Stigma and the discrimination it engenders negatively affect health through multiple mechanisms operating at several different levels of influence. Collectively, these shape both the orientations of people toward members of stigmatized groups and the experiences, and often the self-concepts, of members of groups targeted by stigma. Stigma affects individual-level affective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses that increase stress in the lives of stigmatized groups. Stigma also restricts access to social and community-level resources relevant to good health and exposes individuals to more toxic environments. All act to erode the health of people who are stigmatized. This volume provides a cutting edge, multidisciplinary, multilevel analysis of health and health disparities through the integrative lens of stigma. It brings together the research of leading social and health psychologists, sociologists, public health scholars, and medical ethicists who study stigma and health. It integrates independent literatures on the health-related outcomes of stigma and discrimination and the diverse pathways and processes by which stigma and discrimination affect multiple health outcomes. The book is also forward-looking: It discusses the implications of these themes for policy, interventions, and health care, as well as identifies the most important directions for future research.