Dear all,
You are invited to attend McGill's Cognitive Area Seminar this *Friday
April 8th, 3:30 - 5 PM *(*location *= 1205 Docteur Penfield Ave., Room
S3/4).
*Our speaker is Professor Lauren Human* (McGill Psychology), who will talk
about *"**Who Forms Accurate Personality Impressions? Examining the Role of
Social Attention**"*. See below dashed line for a full abstract.
This will be our final talk of the semester. Hope to see you there!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
*Who Forms Accurate Personality Impressions? Examining the Role of Social
Attention*
Professor Lauren Human, Department of Psychology, McGill University
Being able to form accurate impressions of others’ personality traits, or
be a “good judge”, is argued to be an important and adaptive social skill.
Yet despite decades of research on the topic, the good judge has been very
difficult to identify, raising questions about whether such a person
exists. In this talk, I will argue that the good judge may indeed exist and
that the key to identifying this person may lie in adequately assessing
individual differences in social attention. First I will present evidence
demonstrating that contextual factors that enhance social attention in turn
increase accuracy. Then I will present new data indicating that stable
biological correlates of social attention and vigilance, including cardiac
vagal flexibility and pro-inflammatory profiles, predict forming more
accurate impressions of others. Discussion will focus on the implications
and next steps of this line of research.