Jasmin Cloutier

The impact of childhood experience on amygdala response to perceptually familiar black and white faces

Given the well-documented involvement of the amygdala in race perception, the current study aimed to investigate how interracial contact during childhood shapes amygdala response to racial outgroup members in adulthood. Of particular interest was the impact of childhood experience on amygdala response to familiar, compared with novel, Black faces. Controlling for a number of well-established individual difference measures related to interracial attitudes, the results reveal that perceivers with greater childhood exposure to racial outgroup members display greater relative reduction in amygdala response to familiar Black faces. The implications of such findings are discussed in the context of previous investigations into the neural substrates of race perception and in consideration of potential mechanisms by which childhood experience may shape race perception.

Investigating the early stages of person perception: the asymmetry of social categorization by sex vs. age.

Early perceptual operations are central components of the dynamics of social categorization. The wealth of information provided by facial cues presents challenges to our understanding of these early stages of person perception. The current study aimed to uncover the dynamics of processing multiply categorizable faces, notably as a function of their gender and age. Using a modified four-choice version of a mouse-tracking paradigm (which assesses the relative dominance of two categorical dimensions), the relative influence that sex and age have on each other during categorization of infant, younger adult, and older adult faces was investigated. Results of these experiments demonstrate that when sex and age dimensions are simultaneously categorized, only for infant faces does age influence sex categorization. In contrast, the sex of both young and older adults was shown to influence age categorization. The functional implications of these findings are discussed in light of previous person perception research.

Ventral medial prefrontal cortex and person evaluation: Forming impressions of others varying in financial and moral status

The current study investigated ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) activity during impression formation of individuals varying on distinct dimensions of social status. In a block-design functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, participants were presented with photographs of faces paired with a colored background indicating their lower, same, or higher financial status, or lower, same, or higher moral status. Participants were asked to form an impression of the targets, but were not instructed to explicitly evaluate them based on social status. Building on previous findings (Cloutier, Ambady, Meagher, & Gabrieli, 2012), a region of interest analysis revealed the interaction of status dimension and level in VMPFC, finding not only preferential response to targets with higher compared to lower moral status as previously demonstrated, but also greater response to targets with lower compared to higher financial status. The implications of these results are discussed with an emphasis towards better understanding the impact of social status on social cognition and uncovering the neural substrates of person evaluation.

How Social Status Shapes Person Perception and Evaluation: A Social Neuroscience Perspective:

Inferring the relative rank (i.e., status) of others is essential to navigating social hierarchies. A survey of the expanding social psychological and neuroscience literatures on status reveals a diversity of focuses (e.g., perceiver vs. agent), operationalizations (e.g., status as dominance vs. wealth), and methodologies (e.g., behavioral, neuroscientific). Accommodating this burgeoning literature on status in person perception, the present review offers a novel social neuroscientific framework that integrates existing work with theoretical clarity. This framework distinguishes between five key concepts: (1) strategic pathways to status acquisition for agents, (2) status antecedents (i.e., perceptual and knowledge-based cues that confer status rank), (3) status dimensions (i.e., domains in which an individual may be ranked, such as wealth), (4) status level (i.e., one’s rank along a given dimension), and (5) the relative importance of a given status dimension, dependent on perceiver and context characteristics. Against the backdrop of this framework, we review multiple dimensions of status in the nonhuman and human primate literatures. We then review the behavioral and neuroscientific literatures on the consequences of perceived status for attention and evaluation. Finally, after proposing a social neuroscience framework, we highlight innovative directions for future social status research in social psychology and neuroscience.

Intraparietal Sulcus Activity During Explicit Self-Referential Social Status Judgments about Others

Previous research has suggested that the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) supports judgments of social distance, with greater activity observed in response to targets judged to be closer to each other (Yamakawa, Kanai, Matsumura, & Naito, 2009). Amongst other stimuli, activity in the IPS appears to be responsive to targets varying in social status (Chiao et al., 2009; Cloutier, Ambady, Meagher, & Gabrieli, 2012). The current project examined brain responses during explicit self-referential social status judgments of targets varying in either financial or moral status. Using an event-related fMRI design, participants viewed photographs of male faces paired with distinct levels of financial or moral status. During the task, participants were asked to explicitly identify each target’s status in relation to their own. Focusing on IPS activity, results from whole-brain and region of interest analyses revealed an interaction between social status types and levels. The implications of these results are discussed with respect to our current understanding of the impact of social status on the neural substrates of person perception.

Neuroimaging Investigations of Social Status and Social Hierarchies

Status-based hierarchical influences are believed to be of great consequence and guide much of the social interactions among animals and humans alike. Nevertheless, the impact of social status on human brain structures and functions has received relatively little attention, possibly as a consequence of challenges associated with defining this multifaceted construct. This chapter presents brain imaging investigations and explores how our own social status shapes us and how the social status of others shapes our responses to them. We first examine available evidence of the influence of social status on brain structure and cognitive development. We then review some of the recent functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) investigations on the impact of social status on how we construe others. Finally, we present fMRI experiments demonstrating how individual differences in social status shape how we respond to others.

Social status level and dimension interactively influence person evaluations indexed by P300s

ABSTRACT Functional neuroimaging research suggests that status-based evaluations may not solely depend on the level of social status but also on the conferred status dimension. However, no reports to date have studied how status level and dimension shape early person evaluations. To explore early status-based person evaluations, event-related brain potential data were collected from 29 participants while they indicated the status level and dimension of faces that had been previously trained to be associated with one of four status types: high moral, low moral, high financial, or low financial. Analysis of the P300 amplitude (previously implicated in social evaluation) revealed an interaction of status level and status dimension such that enhanced P300 amplitudes were observed in response to targets of high financial and low moral status relative to targets of low financial and high moral status. Implications of these findings are discussed in the context of our current understanding of status-based evaluation and, more broadly, of the processes by which person knowledge may shape person perception and evaluation.

The social neuroscience of race-based and status-based prejudice

The largely independent neuroscience literatures on race and status show increasingly that both constructs shape how we evaluate others. Following an overview and comparison of both literatures, we suggest that apparent differences in the brain regions supporting race-based and status-based evaluations may tap into distinct components of a common evaluative network. For example, perceiver motivations and/or category cues (e.g., perceptual vs. knowledge-based) can differ depending on whether one is processing race and/or status, ultimately recruiting distinct mechanisms within this common evaluative network. We emphasize the generalizability of this social neuroscience framework for dimensions beyond race and status and highlight how this framework raises new questions in the study of prejudice-reduction interventions.

Intergroup contact throughout the lifespan modulates implicit racial biases across perceivers’ racial group

Few researchers have investigated how contact across the lifespan influences racial bias and whether diversity of contact is beneficial regardless of the race of the perceiver. This research aims to address these gaps in the literature with a focus on how diversity in childhood and current contact shapes implicit racial bias across perceivers’ racial group. In two investigations, participants completed an Implicit Association Test and a self-report measure of the racial diversity of their current and childhood contact. In both studies, increased contact with Black compared with White individuals, both in childhood (Study 2) and currently (Studies 1 and 2), was associated with reduced implicit pro-White racial bias. For Black individuals (Study 2) more contact with Black compared with White individuals also was associated with reduced implicit pro-White racial bias. These findings suggest that diversity in contact across the lifespan may be related to reductions in implicit racial biases and that this relationship may generalize across racial groups.