Explicit Categorization Goals Affect Attention-Related Processing of Race and Gender During Person Construal

Hannah I. Volpert-Esmond; Bruce D. Bartholow

doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103839

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Explicit Categorization Goals Affect Attention-Related Processing of Race and Gender During Person Construal

Journal article

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Explicit Categorization Goals Affect Attention-Related Processing of Race and Gender During Person Construal

Hannah I. Volpert-Esmond and Bruce D. Bartholow

Journal of experimental social psychology, Vol.85, p.103839

11/01/2019

DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103839

PMCID: 7442203

PMID: 32831396

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/7442203View

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Abstract

Faces are categorized by gender and race very quickly, seemingly without regard to perceivers’ goals or motivations, suggesting an automaticity to these judgments that has downstream consequences for evaluations, stereotypes, and social interactions. The current study investigated the extent to which early neurocognitive processes involved in the categorization of faces vary when participants’ tasks goals were to categorize faces by race or by gender. In contrast to previous findings, task-related differences were found, such that differentiation in the P2 event-related potential (ERP) according to perceived gender was facilitated by having an explicit task goal of categorizing faces by gender; however, the P2 was sensitive to race regardless of task goals. Use of principal components analysis (PCA) revealed two underlying components that comprised the P2 and that were differentially sensitive to the gender and race of the faces, depending on participants’ top-down task goals. Results suggest that top-down task demands facilitate discrimination of faces along the attended dimension within less than 200 ms, but that the effect of top-down task demands may not be evident when examining early ERP components that reflect more than one distinct underlying process.

event-related potentials (ERPs)

faces

gender categorization

person construal

principal components analysis (PCA)

race categorization

Details

Title: Subtitle: Explicit Categorization Goals Affect Attention-Related Processing of Race and Gender During Person Construal
Creators: Hannah I. Volpert-Esmond - University of Missouri
Bruce D. Bartholow - University of Missouri
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Journal of experimental social psychology, Vol.85, p.103839
DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103839
PMID: 32831396
PMCID: 7442203
NLM abbreviation: J Exp Soc Psychol
ISSN: 0022-1031
eISSN: 1096-0465
Grant note: name: Life Sciences Graduate Fellowship; name: National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities, award: F31 MD01275
Language: English
Date published: 11/01/2019
Academic Unit: Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
Record Identifier: 9984446272602771

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