Impact of interracial contact on inferring mental states from facial expressions.

ABSTRACT: Although decades of research have shown that intergroup contact critically impacts person perception and evaluation, little is known about how contact shapes the ability to infer others' mental states from facial cues (commonly referred to as mentalizing). In a pair of studies, we demonstrated that interracial contact and motivation to attend to faces jointly influence White perceivers' ability to infer mental states based on facial expressions displaying secondary emotions from both White targets alone (study 1) and White and Black targets (study 2; pre-registered). Consistent with previous work on the effect of motivation and interracial contact on other-race face memory, we found that motivation and interracial contact interacted to shape perceivers' accuracy at inferring mental states

SUBMITTER: Handley G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8292755 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature