Motivated social perception

People are motivated to seek out socially valued individuals (i.e. people who are trustworthy, supportive and well-connected), but it is unclear how efficiently and accurately they do so in real-world settings. I used a combination of social network analysis and neuroimaging to test the possibility that – even absent explicit instructions – people accurately track the social value of others in their community [1]. Socially valued individuals in two dormitories were identified from the nominations of dorm residents. I then scanned the students as they passively viewed photos of their dorm-mates. I found that brain activity in regions associated with mentalizing and value computation differentiated between viewing high valued, versus less valued peers, suggesting that people spontaneously and accurately monitor peers’ social value, potentially to guide subsequent social interactions.

What happens when expectations of social value are misinformed, for example, when someone is less trustworthy than his or her reputation suggests? Will people quickly adjust their impressions, or will they perseverate on their initial expectations? In a series of behavioral studies, I show that having overly optimistic expectations about an interaction partner blinds participants to the failures of said partner in an advice-taking task, resulting in participants continuing to trust the partner’s advice despite repeated feedback that the advice is inaccurate [2]. Together, this line of work parallels my other work on visual perception and demonstrates how social value biases representations of the social world.

References:

1. Morelli, S. A.*, Leong, Y. C.*, Carlson, R. W., Kullar, M., & Zaki, J. Neural detection of socially valued community members. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(32): 8149-8154 (2018)

2. Leong, Y. C. & Zaki, J. Unrealistic optimism in advice taking: A computational account. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(2): 170 (2018)