E. Paige Lloyd

What Lies Beneath? Minority Group Members’ Suspicion of Whites’ Egalitarian Motivation Predicts Responses to Whites’ Smiles

Antiprejudice norms and attempts to conceal racial bias have made Whites’ positive treatment of racial minorities attributionally ambiguous. Although some minorities believe Whites’ positivity is genuine, others are suspicious of Whites’ motives and believe their kindness is primarily motivated by desires to avoid appearing prejudiced. For those suspicious of Whites’ motives, Whites’ smiles may paradoxically function as threat cues. To the extent that Whites’ smiles cue threat among suspicious minorities, we hypothesized that suspicious minorities would explicitly perceive Whites’ smiles as threatening (Study 1), automatically orient to smiling White—as opposed to smiling Black—targets (Study 2), and accurately discriminate between Whites’ real and fake smiles (Study 3). These results provide convergent evidence that cues typically associated with acceptance and affiliation ironically function as threat cues among suspicious racial minorities.

The face of fear and anger: Facial width-to-height ratio biases recognition of angry and fearful expressions.

The ability to rapidly and accurately decode facial expressions is adaptive for human sociality. Although judgments of emotion are primarily determined by musculature, static face structure can also impact emotion judgments. The current work investigates how facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), a stable feature of all faces, influences perceivers’ judgments of expressive displays of anger and fear (Studies 1a, 1b, & 2), and anger and happiness (Study 3). Across 4 studies, we provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that perceivers more readily see anger on faces with high fWHR compared with those with low fWHR, which instead facilitates the recognition of fear and happiness. This bias emerges when participants are led to believe that targets displaying otherwise neutral faces are attempting to mask an emotion (Studies 1a & 1b), and is evident when faces display an emotion (Studies 2 & 3). Together, these studies suggest that target facial width-to-height ratio biases ascriptions of emotion with consequences for emotion recognition speed and accuracy.

Facing humanness:: Facial width-to-height ratio predicts ascriptions of humanity.

The ascription of mind to others is central to social cognition. Most research on the ascription of mind has focused on motivated, top-down processes. The current work provides novel evidence that facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) serves as a bottom-up perceptual signal of humanness. Using a range of well-validated operational definitions of humanness, we provide evidence across 5 studies that target faces with relatively greater fWHR are seen as less than fully human compared with their relatively lower fWHR counterparts. We then present 2 ancillary studies exploring whether the fWHR-to-humanness link is mediated by previously established fWHR-trait links in the literature. Finally, 3 additional studies extend this fWHR-humanness link beyond measurements of humanness, demonstrating that the fWHR-humanness link has consequences for downstream social judgments including the sorts of crimes people are perceived to be guilty of and the social tasks for which they seem helpful. In short, we provide evidence for the hypothesis that individuals with relatively greater facial width-to-height ratio are routinely denied sophisticated, humanlike minds.

Black and White Lies: Race Based Biases in Deception Judgments

In six studies (N = 605), participants made deception judgments about videos of Black and White targets who told truths and lies about interpersonal relationships. In Studies 1a, 1b, 1c, and 2, White participants judged that Black targets were telling the truth more often than they judged that White targets were telling the truth. This truth bias was predicted by Whites’ motivation to respond without prejudice. For Black participants, however, motives to respond without prejudice did not moderate responses (Study 2). In Study 3, we found similar effects with a manipulation of the targets’ apparent race. Finally, in Study 4, we used eye-tracking techniques to demonstrate that Whites’ truth bias for Black targets is likely the result of late-stage correction processes: Despite ultimately judging that Black targets were telling the truth more often than White targets, Whites were faster to fixate on the on-screen “lie” response box when targets were Black than when targets were White. These systematic race-based biases have important theoretical implications (e.g., for lie detection and improving intergroup communication and relations) and practical implications (e.g., for reducing racial bias in law enforcement).

The Face of Suspicion

Because Whites use positivity to conceal bias, people of color may question whether Whites’ positivity is genuine. We predicted that those suspicious of Whites’ motives may mentally represent Whites as less trustworthy and more hostile than those low in suspicion. We tested these predictions using reverse correlation. First, we examined high- and low-suspicion Black participants’ mental representations of Whites using neutrally expressed (Study 1a) and smiling (Study 2a) White base faces. In Study 2b, we compared suspicious Black participants’ mental representations of Whites to a randomly generated control. In Study 2c, we extend these results to perceptions of smile authenticity and rule out a potential stimulus effect. The results suggest that compared to unsuspicious participants and controls, suspicious Black participants hold less trustworthy, less authentic, and sometimes more hostile representations of Whites. Suspicion’s effect on intergroup dynamics may therefore extend up the cognitive stream to the fundamental mental representations of Whites.

Advancing Our Understanding of the Interface Between Perception and Intergroup Relations

We are delighted to have the opportunity to respond to Y. Jenny Xiao, G eraldine Coppin, and Jay J. Van Bavel’s (this issue) perceptual model of intergroup relations. We see this model as filling an important void in the literature between the resurgent interest in motivated perception and the long-standing interest in social psychology in intergroup relations. Xiao and colleagues propose that social groups, identities, and contexts can alter perception across multiple modalities; in turn, these perceptions influence intergroup attitudes, judgments, and behaviors. Although noting that there is relatively little empirical support for the reverse causal pathway, they also postulate that the model may be bidirectional, suggesting that intergroup relations may influence perceptual processes, which may in turn affect social identity. Thus, the crux of the proposed model is that “social identification influences perception” (p. 257). The authors suggest that this particular link has been, until recently, understudied in social psychology, a point to which we return. We find much to like in Xiao and colleagues’ (this issue) theory. Specific to their model, we appreciated the relatively unique focus on multiple modalities. To our knowledge, no extant model of intergroup relations or social identification explicitly includes visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory perception as components. Indeed, as the authors note, much of the work in this area has focused on visual perception (e.g., Social Vision; Johnson & Adams, 2013). Nevertheless, perception is not limited to vision; therefore, any theory focusing on how perception, broadly defined, mediates the relationship between social identity and intergroup relations should be multimodal. Moreover, the focus onmultiple modalities serves only to underscore the relative dearth of work in this area focusing on modalities other than vision. Related, perceptual modalities are rarely isolated in vivo, regardless of how they are studied in psychology laboratories. Hence, we appreciated the authors’ inclusion of cross-modal perception in their model as well as in their review of the literature. Second, we found the authors’ review of the extant literature to be particularly inclusive and informative. The authors review the important role social identity and fundamental motivations for belonging have on cognition, as well as note that perception is socially constructed. In addition, the authors review recent research on visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory perception, providing a concise summary while acknowledging where areas for future research exist. Finally, on the whole, we believe the perceptual model of intergroup relations is defensible given the current data. Indeed much of our own work, and other related work at the interface of perception and intergroup relations, corroborates the authors’ arguments. For example, speaking to the effects of social identities on perception (Pathway C), we have demonstrated that target race alters perception of physicality. White perceivers evaluate Black men as more physically formidable and as more muscular than White men matched in height, weight, and strength (Wilson, Hugenberg, & Rule, 2016). In a separate demonstration, Fincher and Tetlock (2016) provided compelling evidence for the perception to intergroup relations pathway (Pathway D), showing that perceptual dehumanization (i.e., withholding face-typical processing) facilitates extreme punishment (i.e., death penalty sentencing). Other work speaks to the proposed bidirectional nature of the model, specifically how intergroup relations can influence perception (Pathway F). Black perceivers who believe Whites are primarily externally motivated to respond without prejudice (i.e., Black perceivers who are suspicious of Whites motives) perceive White faces to be more threatening than their nonsuspicious counterparts (Kunstman, Tuscherer, Trawalter, & Lloyd, 2016). This was documented both in explicit judgments of threat and in patterns of visual attention. Inzlicht, Kaiser, and Major (2008) strengthened this intergroup relations to perception link, demonstrating that individual differences in stigma consciousness affect emotion perception. Women who expect to be treated with prejudice perceive contempt lingering on male faces. Finally, compelling evidence for the final link (perception to social membership; Pathway E) comes from research indicating that perceptual fluency facilitates ingroup categorizations and thereby ingroup advantages (i.e., liking; Claypool, Housley, Hugenberg, Bernstein, & Mackie, 2012) and that fluency can explain when prejudice arises (e.g., Lick & Johnson, 2013). Thus, taken together, we think that there is robust evidence to support many of the core claims of this model. Although we believe the model espoused by Xiao and colleagues (this issue) is important and drives forward our understanding of the interface between perception and intergroup relations, we next note several areas where this model may be

Miami University Deception Detection Database

In the present work, we introduce the Miami University Deception Detection Database (MU3D), a free resource containing 320 videos of target individuals telling truths and lies. Eighty (20 Black female, 20 Black male, 20 White female, and 20 White male) different targets were recorded speaking honestly and dishonestly about their social relationships. Each target generated four different videos (i.e., positive truth, negative truth, positive lie, negative lie), yielding 320 videos fully crossing target race, target gender, statement valence, and statement veracity. These videos were transcribed by trained research assistants and evaluated by naïve raters. Descriptive analyses of the video characteristics (e.g., length) and subjective ratings (e.g., target attractiveness) are provided. The stimuli and an information codebook can be accessed free of charge for academic research purposes from http://hdl.handle.net/2374.MIA/6067. The MU3D offers scholars the ability to conduct research using standardized stimuli that can aid in building more comprehensive theories of interpersonal sensitivity, enhance replication among labs, facilitate the use of signal detection analyses, and promote consideration of race, gender, and their interactive effects in deception detection research.

Comparing Review Strategies in the Classroom: Self-Testing Yields More Favorable Student Outcomes Relative to Question Generation

Although previous research has demonstrated that guided testing (i.e., self-testing) and question generation effectively increase retention compared to control methods, no work has simultaneously implemented both strategies in the classroom. In a semester-long study designed to maximize experimental control in a naturalistic setting, we adapted both review strategies for an introduction-level psychology course. We found that guided testing produced better student performance on exams than generating one’s own practice questions. Additionally, students evaluated guided testing more positively than question generation. These findings build upon previous guided testing and question generation work by showing that, in the context of an introductory classroom, guided testing is more effective and efficient than generating questions.

Families as ingroups that provide social resources: Implications for well-being

Abstract In six studies, we examined how properties of families as ingroups (i.e., group value, entitativity, and identification) enhance well-being, leveraging the Model of Ingroups as Social Resources (MISR). In correlational studies involving college students (Study 1) and older adults (Study 2), people experienced greater well-being when they reported that their families were greater in group value, entitativity, and identification. Studies 3–5 manipulated each of these three family ingroup properties, respectively, and we observed causal evidence that each one improves well-being. Study 6 replicated Study 3, and it ruled out a mood-based alternative account. These studies contribute to our understanding of how families affect people’s mental and physical health, and they provide an initial empirical test of these three ingroup constructs concurrently and in a manipulated fashion.