Motivated social perception: (Mis)seeing faces to promote intergroup goals 

Abstract: Visual perception is often assumed to be accurate; that is, people usually believe what they see. But recent evidence suggests this is not always the case: I will present research revealing that social goals can modulate early-stage face processing in the brain and in mental representation. Although these distortions are subtle and difficult to control, they are sufficient to elicit discriminatory social impressions, attitudes, and behaviors that favor ingroup members over outgroup members. This research highlights an important interface between motivation and perception that has implications for social behavior and self-regulation. 

David Amodio, is Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science and Director of the Social Neuroscience Lab at New York University. Dr Amodio has published key papers on social cognitive functions in medial prefrontal cortex (http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v7/n4/abs/nrn1884.html - with Chris Frith), and has recently published an important review on the neuroscience of prejudice and stereotyping (http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v15/n10/abs/nrn3800.html). Dr Amodio will be presenting the second in the series of IMC lecture under the conflict theme.