We present a conceptual integration of two major types of social perception models. First, according to social categorization models, perceivers can employ two processes: they either treat other people as individuals (individuation) or as members of social groups (social categorization). Second, according to connectionist models, person perception is driven by a single process of spreading activation between mental representations in a learned associative network. We suggest that social categorization and individuation can be conceptualized as different types of inputs to a single (connectionist) process. Furthermore, we implement this idea in computer simulations and show that it can account for an empirical dissociation between social categorization and individuation despite being a single process model. Overall, this work aims to contribute to the coherence and integration of the theoretical and empirical literature on social cognition.

It is widely assumed that people tend to “categorize” other people. However, the term “categorization” has been used with qualitatively different underlying definitions in the person perception literature. We present a conceptual analysis in which we disentangle four existing definitions: (a) categorization as representing, (b) categorization as dichotomizing, (c) categorization as organizing, and (d) categorization as grouping. Subsequently, we show that seemingly antagonistic viewpoints in the literature may be reconciled by disentangling these definitions. Furthermore, we argue that disentangling these definitions is vital for theoretical interpretations of (past and future) empirical findings. Overall, our work aims to contribute to the clarity of person perception theories, provide novel perspectives on existing debates, and serve as a stepping stone for more differentiated models of person perception.

It is widely assumed among psychologists that people spontaneously form trustworthiness impressions of newly encountered people from their facial appearance. However, most existing studies directly or indirectly induced an impression formation goal, which means that the existing empirical support for spontaneous facial trustworthiness impressions remains insufficient. In particular, it remains an open question whether trustworthiness from facial appearance is encoded in memory. Using the 'who said what' paradigm, we indirectly measured to what extent people encoded the trustworthiness of observed faces. The results of 4 studies demonstrated a reliable tendency toward trustworthiness encoding. This was shown under conditions of varying context-relevance, and salience of trustworthiness. Moreover, evidence for this tendency was obtained using both (experimentally controlled) artificial and (naturalistic varying) real faces. Taken together, these results suggest that there is a spontaneous tendency to form relatively stable trustworthiness impressions from facial appearance, which is relatively independent of the context. As such, our results further underline how widespread influences of facial trustworthiness may be in our everyday life. (PsycINFO Database Record

A central idea in social psychology is that people can construe other people in terms of two types of mental representations: social categories (e.g. male) and attributes (e.g. intelligent). It is assumed that assigning a person to a social category (i.e. social categorization) is one of the most important causes of stereotyping. However, no theory has yet successfully explicated the properties that distinguish social categories from attributes and how those distinct properties may cause stereotyping. We show that an interpretation of social categories as mental representations that strongly exclude other mental representations (i.e. ’excluders’) can explain how social categories may cause stereotyping. In addition, we present computer simulations that implement the assumed principles in a connectionist model where social categories are interpreted as nodes with strong inhibitory links. We argue that our model solves fundamental ambiguities in social categorization theories and unifies these theories with connectionist models of person perception.

Humans automatically imitate other people's actions during social interactions, building rapport and social closeness in the process. Although the behavioral consequences and neural correlates of imitation have been studied extensively, little is known about the neural mechanisms that control imitative tendencies. For example, the degree to which an agent is perceived as human-like influences automatic imitation, but it is not known how perception of animacy influences brain circuits that control imitation. In the current fMRI study, we examined how the perception and belief of animacy influence the control of automatic imitation. Using an imitation-inhibition paradigm that involves suppressing the tendency to imitate an observed action, we manipulated both bottom-up (visual input) and top-down (belief) cues to animacy. Results show divergent patterns of behavioral and neural responses. Behavioral analyses show that automatic imitation is equivalent when one or both cues to animacy are present but reduces when both are absent. By contrast, right TPJ showed sensitivity to the presence of both animacy cues. Thus, we demonstrate that right TPJ is biologically tuned to control imitative tendencies when the observed agent both looks like and is believed to be human. The results suggest that right TPJ may be involved in a specialized capacity to control automatic imitation of human agents, rather than a universal process of conflict management, which would be more consistent with generalist theories of imitative control. Evidence for specialized neural circuitry that "controls" imitation offers new insight into developmental disorders that involve atypical processing of social information, such as autism spectrum disorders.