Neurological Disassociations of Social Perception Processes

Abstract

Presented is a preliminary model of social perception, based on neurological models of word reading. The model distinguishes between two types of social perception processes, perceptual/episodic information, and conceptual/abstracted information. It is hypothesized that perceptual/episodic processes are dominated by the right cerebral hemisphere, whereas conceptual/abstracted processes are dominated by the left cerebral hemisphere. Three experiments are presented that demonstrate the described hemispheric asymmetries in person perception. Experiment 1 utilizes the Mere Exposure Paradigm to demonstrate that the association of positive affect to previously viewed target photos of men and women occurs only in the right hemisphere. Experiment 2 uses photos of ingroup and outgroup members as primes for positively and negatively valenced words within a lexical decision task. Results indicated an ingroup favoritism effect only in the left hemisphere. Experiment 3 utilized an online probe methodology within a social categorization task to demonstrate prototype-like responses in the left hemisphere and exemplar-like responses in the right hemisphere. The results are discussed for how they relate to models of person perception and new testable predictions are outlined. Finally, presented is a short discussion regarding how neurological models of perception can be utilized within a social cognitive domain.