When bodies and traits collide: Investigating a “Who” system for social cognition

This collection consists of neuroimaging and behavioural data, collected across four experiments.
The project aims to bring together expertise in neuroscience and social psychology to examine the brain systems that link multiple person-features.The first part of the project will establish a neural model of how the brain links bodies with traits.The second part will test how this model breaks down when we perceive social groups.

Research in social psychology has shown that we treat members of society differently based on their social group. For example, homeless people and drug addicts receive a reduced status relative to other members of society. Examining how brain responses differ when perceiving social out-groups will illuminate the physiological basis for how we treat members of society.<p>The story of Jekyll and Hyde highlights a fascinating problem: How do we link together features of a person in order to understand who somebody is? For instance, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have the same physical appearance, but distinctly different traits. To date, neuroscientists and psychologists have studied separately how we perceive others' body parts (eg, arms, legs) and traits (eg, kind, selfish). As such, it is unknown how multiple features of a person (eg, thin and kind) are linked together to understand their identity.

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