RESEARCH

The Social Vision of Groups

In the domain of person perception, the field of social cognition has revealed an extensive amount about social categorization and the rapid judgments we make about others. Yet, we know considerably less about our visual perception of groups—which are highly complex, multifaceted visual ensembles. My research is at the forefront of transitioning from person perception to people perception—investigating the low-level visual cues and high-level motivational processes through which we form rapid and consequential judgments about groups.

For instance, in a series of studies, we investigated our perception of groups varying in gender composition and how a group’s gender composition impacts evaluations of threat (Alt, Goodale, Lick, & Johnson, 2018 – SPPS). We found that within half a second, we make adept numeric estimations of the number of men in a group and that explicit threat judgments increase as the number of men in the group increases. Additionally, we used the groups as primes in an Affective Misattribution Procedure and found that groups with more men, presented very briefly (200 ms), led to greater categorization of a subsequent neutral target as more threatening, thus indicating an implicit association of majority men groups with more threat.

Accuracy & Bias in Person Perception

We also investigate inferences we make about group-level characteristics (e.g., interpersonal relations). In one project, we used a full social network dataset (270+ people) to derive the number and directionality of friendship ties (in- and out-degree centrality) and a metric of one’s position to connect disparate groups (brokerage). We then showed a set of naïve observers’ the facial images of each person in the social network, which they rated in terms of perceived popularity and brokerage. Results showed naïve observers were accurate in their judgments of popularity as it relates to the number of people who list the person as a friend (in-degree centrality), but not the number of people who that person lists as a friend (out-degree centrality). Perceivers’ judgments about one’s position to connect disparate groups were also predicted by actual social network brokerage (Alt, Parkinson, Klienbaum, & Johnson – under review).

Prejudice, Stigma, and Confronting Interventions

We also investigate the downstream consequences of social categorization, namely prejudice and how to mitigate its expression. This work centers on the confrontation of prejudice including why people choose to confront and how to increase confronting behaviors to reduce prejudicial actions. Related to the first point, we demonstrated that confronting positive racial stereotypes, compared to negative racial stereotypes (or not confronting), leads to high social costs (i.e., more negative evaluations). Furthermore, among a sample of African Americans and Asian Americans, we showed that racial minorities are aware of these costs, which in turn accounts for lower rates of confronting positive, compared to negative, racial stereotypes (Alt, Chaney, & Shih, in press - GPIR).

We are also part of a multi-year project that tests the physical health costs of experiencing homophobia. This work experimentally tests the relationship between stigma and health via a skin recovery paradigm. Currently, data analysis is in progress however this would be some of the first work to demonstrate a direct, experimentally valid, link between an experience with homophobia and negative health outcomes.