Anthony Little

An evolutionary approach highlights that selection pressures will have shaped social perception to be functional. Behaviour is extremely complex and so it is unlikely that observers will always behave adaptively but an evolutionary view strongly predicts that social perception should favour adaptive responses. In this talk I will discuss examples from face perception of accurate social judgement and potentially adaptive choices. One key arena for adaptation lies in variation: in preferences, for example, our individual perception of who is attractive appears to be influenced by the condition of the body we inhabit, our partnership status, our reproductive status, and the environment we find ourselves. In all of these domains preference can be said to vary in ways that are to the benefit of the perceiver. Preferences can also be seen to be influenced by simple exposure and via social learning, mechanisms which are also proposed to be adaptive in adjusting behaviour to fit the current environment. Overall, these studies highlight sophisticated and flexible mechanisms for generating variation in face preferences, mechanisms that are sensitive to: Internal biological factors, environment, experience, and other people’s opinions and choices. Understanding the relevant selection pressures on human social choices can reveal why certain cues are so important in faces and illuminate why people vary in their social perception.

Personal website which has some studies, info, and papers: www.alittlelab.com