Social Neuroscience

Status-Based Evaluation

Across various projects with my collaborators in the Impression Formation Social Neuroscience Lab, I have been actively studying how we perceive social status in others and how perceived status ultimately shapes the evaluations and decisions we make about others.

The social neuroscience of race-based and status-based prejudice

The largely independent neuroscience literatures on race and status show increasingly that both constructs shape how we evaluate others. Following an overview and comparison of both literatures, we suggest that apparent differences in the brain …

External motivation to avoid prejudice alters neural responses to targets varying in race and status

Those who are high in external motivation to respond without prejudice tend to focus on non-racial attributes when describing others ([Norton, Sommers, Apfelbaum, Pura, & Ariely, …

How social status shapes person perception and evaluation: A social neuroscience perspective

Inferring the relative rank (i.e., status) of others is essential to navigating social hierarchies. A survey of the expanding social psychological and neuroscience literatures on status reveals a diversity of focuses (e.g., perceiver vs. agent), …