Colloquium Recording Available Here

Title: Mechanisms and malleability of facial stereotyping

Abstract: People infer personality traits based on facial appearance (e.g., downturned lips = untrustworthy), and despite being largely inaccurate, such facial stereotypes bias important social evaluations and behaviors. In this talk, I explore the dynamic mechanisms underlying facial stereotyping, its interaction with intergroup processes, and emerging techniques to reduce or eliminate these biases. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated the implicit activation of trustworthiness and dominance concepts in response to faces, which predicted unique variance in behavior and was unrelated to explicit judgments of faces. Study 3 showed that these implicit associations are supported by shared neural mechanisms between the processing of facial appearance and trait concepts. Studies 4-6 demonstrated the flexibility of facial stereotyping, as evidenced by variations in visualization, facial impressions, and the use of facial features across group boundaries. Finally, Studies 7-9 showed that counter-stereotype training mitigated the negative impact of facial stereotyping on criminal sentencing. Together, these findings highlight that facial stereotyping is an implicit yet malleable process shaped by context and amenable to targeted interventions.

Bio: Youngki Hong, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder and Director of the Social Vision & Mind Lab. His work primarily examines how impressions of others are formed based on facial appearance and social categories, and how these impressions shape social behavior. His research integrates theories and methods from social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and machine learning.