PSYC 53.02 Social Perception

In a fleeting glance, we can identify a person, infer their emotional state, determine their gender, estimate their age, assess their attractiveness, and surmise the focus of their thoughts. Social perception is fundamental to social interaction in humans as well as other animals.  This course will examine social perception in humans and other species and in doing so will touch on issues including functional specialization, neurocognitive development, and evolution. Faces have received much of the attention in social perception and we’ll spend significant time on face perception, but we’ll also cover body perception, biological motion perception, voice perception, and some of the various types of social perception in non-human animals. We will draw on a range of approaches including psychophysics, neuropsychology, single-cell recording, transcranial magnetic stimulation, fMRI, and twin studies.

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:SOC

The Timetable of Class Meetings contains the most up-to-date information about a course. It includes not only the meeting time and instructor, but also its official distributive and/or world culture designation. This information supersedes any information you may see elsewhere, to include what may appear in this ORC/Catalog or on a department/program website. Note that course attributes may change term to term therefore those in effect are those (only) during the term in which you enroll in the course.

Department-Specific Course Categories

Psychological and Brain Sciences