Cognition / Perception Seminar Events

Elena Cañadas
Universidad de Granada

Social Categorization as a Context for the Allocation of Attentional Control

Recent studies of cognitive control have highlighted the idea that context can rapidly cue the control of attention. Data from several experiments will be presented showing that faces can be quickly categorized on the basis of gender and used as a contextual cue to allocate attentional control. This effect may reveal some of the processes implicated in the development and operation of implicit social stereotypes. A general procedure is used in which three of four faces from one gender group are associated with a high proportion of congruent trials in a flanker task, while three of four faces of the other gender group are associated with a low proportion of congruent trials. A single inconsistent face within each gender group is associated with the proportion congruency of the opposite gender group. A social context-specific proportion congruent effect is observed (i.e., larger interference for the group associated with a high proportion of congruent trials), even for inconsistent members of the group, revealing that a new implicit stereotype can be created and used to link gender with a specific proportion of congruency. This effect depends on instructions to categorize vs. individuate the target faces – it occurs under instructions to categorize faces, but not under instructions to individuate faces. This effect did not occur in an experiment that used non-social categories (e.g. animal vs. tools), and other individual-interpersonal (e.g., emotional expression) rather than group-related social features (e.g., gender or trustworthiness). All told, the research appears to offer a tool for studying the links between social categorization and attentional control.