Cargando…

Impact of interracial contact on inferring mental states from facial expressions

Although decades of research have shown that intergroup contact critically impacts person perception and evaluation, little is known about how contact shapes the ability to infer others' mental states from facial cues (commonly referred to as mentalizing). In a pair of studies, we demonstrated...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Handley, Grace, Kubota, Jennifer T., Li, Tianyi, Cloutier, Jasmin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8292755/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34295514
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202137
_version_ 1783724887940005888
author Handley, Grace
Kubota, Jennifer T.
Li, Tianyi
Cloutier, Jasmin
author_facet Handley, Grace
Kubota, Jennifer T.
Li, Tianyi
Cloutier, Jasmin
author_sort Handley, Grace
collection PubMed
description Although decades of research have shown that intergroup contact critically impacts person perception and evaluation, little is known about how contact shapes the ability to infer others' mental states from facial cues (commonly referred to as mentalizing). In a pair of studies, we demonstrated that interracial contact and motivation to attend to faces jointly influence White perceivers’ ability to infer mental states based on facial expressions displaying secondary emotions from both White targets alone (study 1) and White and Black targets (study 2; pre-registered). Consistent with previous work on the effect of motivation and interracial contact on other-race face memory, we found that motivation and interracial contact interacted to shape perceivers' accuracy at inferring mental states from secondary emotions. When motivated to attend to the task, high-contact White perceivers were more accurate at inferring both Black and White targets’ mental states; unexpectedly, the opposite was true for low-contact perceivers. Importantly, the target race did not interact with interracial contact, suggesting that contact is associated with general changes in mentalizing irrespective of target race. These findings expand the theoretical understanding and implications of contact for fundamental social cognition.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8292755
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2021
publisher The Royal Society
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-82927552021-07-21 Impact of interracial contact on inferring mental states from facial expressions Handley, Grace Kubota, Jennifer T. Li, Tianyi Cloutier, Jasmin R Soc Open Sci Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience Although decades of research have shown that intergroup contact critically impacts person perception and evaluation, little is known about how contact shapes the ability to infer others' mental states from facial cues (commonly referred to as mentalizing). In a pair of studies, we demonstrated that interracial contact and motivation to attend to faces jointly influence White perceivers’ ability to infer mental states based on facial expressions displaying secondary emotions from both White targets alone (study 1) and White and Black targets (study 2; pre-registered). Consistent with previous work on the effect of motivation and interracial contact on other-race face memory, we found that motivation and interracial contact interacted to shape perceivers' accuracy at inferring mental states from secondary emotions. When motivated to attend to the task, high-contact White perceivers were more accurate at inferring both Black and White targets’ mental states; unexpectedly, the opposite was true for low-contact perceivers. Importantly, the target race did not interact with interracial contact, suggesting that contact is associated with general changes in mentalizing irrespective of target race. These findings expand the theoretical understanding and implications of contact for fundamental social cognition. The Royal Society 2021-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8292755/ /pubmed/34295514 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202137 Text en © 2021 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
Handley, Grace
Kubota, Jennifer T.
Li, Tianyi
Cloutier, Jasmin
Impact of interracial contact on inferring mental states from facial expressions
title Impact of interracial contact on inferring mental states from facial expressions
title_full Impact of interracial contact on inferring mental states from facial expressions
title_fullStr Impact of interracial contact on inferring mental states from facial expressions
title_full_unstemmed Impact of interracial contact on inferring mental states from facial expressions
title_short Impact of interracial contact on inferring mental states from facial expressions
title_sort impact of interracial contact on inferring mental states from facial expressions
topic Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8292755/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34295514
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202137
work_keys_str_mv AT handleygrace impactofinterracialcontactoninferringmentalstatesfromfacialexpressions
AT kubotajennifert impactofinterracialcontactoninferringmentalstatesfromfacialexpressions
AT litianyi impactofinterracialcontactoninferringmentalstatesfromfacialexpressions
AT cloutierjasmin impactofinterracialcontactoninferringmentalstatesfromfacialexpressions