Changing Minds: Behavioral and Neural Insights Into Impression Updating

Abstract

Person perception is a dynamic, evolving process. Because other people are an endless source of social information, people need to update their impressions of others based upon new information. This dissertation presents a program of research that integrates social psychological theory with the methods of cognitive neuroscience in order to gain new insights into the neural dynamics that support impression updating. After a brief introduction reviewing previous neuroimaging and behavioral work relevant to impression updating (Chapter 1), we begin by identifying an extended network of regions involved in the updating process (Chapter 2). In subsequent studies, we attempt to characterize general principles guiding activity of this network. First, we dissociate aspects of this network involved in meaningful updating of person representations from regions whose activity is more indicative of a response to mere inconsistency (Chapter 3). Next, we demonstrate that the perceived frequency of a given behavior is strongly predictive of its ultimate impact on both behavioral and neural markers of impression updating (Chapter 4). Further, we begin to assess bottom-up influences on updating (Chapter 5), demonstrating that behavioral frequency ultimately has a greater impact on updating outcomes than either behavioral domain or valence. Finally, we demonstrate that group membership can exert a top-down influence on the updating process (Chapter 6).