A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
A taxonomy for human social perception: Data-driven modeling with cinematic stimuli
Authors: Santavirta, Severi; Malén, Tuulia; Erdemli, Asli; Nummenmaa, Lauri
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Publication year: 2024
Journal: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Journal name in source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Journal acronym: J Pers Soc Psychol
Volume: 127
Issue: 6
First page : 1146
Last page: 1171
ISSN: 0022-3514
eISSN: 1939-1315
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000415
Web address : http://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000415
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/458436962
Every day, humans encounter complex social situations that need to be encoded effectively to allow interaction with others. Yet, principles for organizing the perception of social features from the external world remain poorly characterized. In this large-scale study, we investigated the principles of social perception in dynamic scenes. In the primary data set, we presented 234 movie clips (41 min) containing various social situations to 1,140 participants and asked them to evaluate the presence of 138 social features in each clip. Analyses of the social feature ratings revealed that some features are perceived categorically (present or absent) and others continuously (intensity) and simple social features requiring immediate response are perceived most consistently across participants. To establish the low-dimensional perceptual organization for social features based on movies, we used principal coordinate analysis and consensus clustering for the feature ratings. These dimension reduction analyses revealed that the social perceptual structure can be modeled with eight main dimensions and that behaviorally relevant perceptual categories emerge from these main dimensions. This social perceptual structure generalized from the perception of unrelated Hollywood movie clips to the perception of a full Finnish movie (70 min) and to the perception of static images (n = 468) and across three independent sets of participants (n = 2,254). Based on the results, we propose eight basic dimensions of social perception as a model for rapid social perception where social situations are perceived along eight orthogonal perceptual dimensions (most importantly emotional valence, empathy vs. dominance, and cognitive vs. physical behavior). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Funding information in the publication:
Grants and funding: Turku University Foundation, Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Finnish Governmental Research Funding, Päivikki and Sakari Sohlberg Foundation, Finnish Brain Foundation, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Academy of Finland
