Making Sense of How People Perceive Each Other

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., April 4, 2003 — C. Neil Macrae of the department of psychological and brain science at Dartmouth will deliver a Class of 1960 Scholars Lecture on the psychology of perception, “Minds, Brains, and Person Perception,” on Friday, April 11, at 4 p.m. in Bronfman Hall, room 5.

In attempting to make sense of other people, perceivers regularly construct and use categorical representations to simplify and streamline the process. Noting the importance of categorical thinking in everyday life, Macrae’s talk will focus on the cognitive utility of categorical socialperception. It will consider the biological determinants of categorical thinking and how these may impact on the efficiency of the person perception process.

According to a study by Macrae and colleagues to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society, new research shows that the level of eye contact affects the efficiency of our brain at accessing and categorizing people according to our own preexisting criteria.

Macrae is particularly interested in categorical thinking and the issues of how, when and why expectancies shape people’s reactions toward, and memories about, others. His work extends to a consideration of implicit cognition and the neural correlates of person perception. Macrae also has studied inhibitory processing, particularly the issues of how the mind controls the expression of unwanted thoughts and the retrieval of inappropriate memories.

Recent research by him has appeared in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Annual Review of Psychology.

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