Tamar Gendler argues that, for those living in a society in which race is a salient sociological feature, it is impossible to be fully rational: members of such a society must either fail to encode relevant information containing race, or suffer epistemic costs by being implicitly racist. However, I argue that, although Gendler calls attention to a pitfall worthy of study, she fails to conclusively demonstrate that there are epistemic (or cognitive) costs of being racist. Gendler offers three (...) supporting phenomena. First, implicit racists expend cognitive energy repressing their implicit biases. I reply, citing Ellen Bialystok’s research, that constant use of executive functioning can be beneficial. Second, Gendler argues that awareness of a negative stereotype of one’s own race with regard to a given task negatively affects one’s performance of that task. This phenomenon, I argue, demonstrates that those against whom the stigma is directed suffer costs, but it fails to demonstrate that the stigmatizers suffer cognitively. Finally, Gendler argues that racists are less competent when recognizing faces of other races than when recognizing faces of their own race because, in the first instance, they encode the race of the face (taking up cognitive space that could have been used to encode fine-grained distinctions), whereas in the second instance they encode no race. I argue that in-group/out-group categorization rather than racism is the cognitive cost. I conclude that Gendler has failed to demonstrate that there are cognitive costs associated with being a racist. (shrink)

Throughout history, dance has maintained a critical presence across all human cultures, defying barriers of class, race, and status. How dance has synergistically co-evolved with humans has fueled a rich debate on the function of art and the essence of aesthetic experience, engaging numerous artists, historians, philosophers, and scientists. While dance shares many features with other art forms, one attribute unique to dance is that it is most commonly expressed with the human body. Because of this, social scientists and (...) neuroscientists are turning to dance and dancers to help answer questions of how the brain coordinates the body to perform complex, precise, and beautiful movements. In the present paper, we discuss how recent advances in neuroscientific methods provide the tools to advance our understanding of not only the cerebral phenomena associated with dance learning and observation but also the neural underpinnings of aesthetic appreciation associated with watching dance. We suggest that future work within the fields of dance neuroscience and neuroaesthetics have the potential to provide mutual benefits to both the scientific and artistic communities. (shrink)

The ethical and social implications of data mining, algorithmic curation and automation in the context of social media have been of heightened concern for a range of researchers with interests in digital media in recent years, with particular concerns about privacy arising in the context of mobile and locative media. Despite their wide adoption and economic importance, mobile dating apps have received little scholarly attention from this perspective – but they are intense sites of data generation, algorithmic processing, and (...) class='Hi'>cross-platform data-sharing; bound up with competing cultures of production, exploitation and use. In this paper, we describe the ways various forms of data are incorporated into, and emerge from, hook-up apps’ business logics, socio-technical arrangements, and cultures of use to produce multiple and intersecting data cultures. We propose a multi-layered research agenda for critical and empirical inquiry into this field, and suggest appropriate conceptual and methodological frameworks for exploring the social and political challenges of data cultures. (shrink)

We take a fresh look at emotion recognition in autistic children, by testing their recognition of three different emotions (happy, sad, and surprise). The interest in selecting these is that whereas the first two are typical “simple” emotions (caused by situations), the third is typically a “cognitive” emotion (caused by beliefs). Because subjects with autism have clear difficulties in understanding beliefs, we predicted they would show more difficulty in recognising surprise. In contrast, as they have no difficulty in understanding situations (...) as causes of emotion, we predicted they would not show deficits in recognising happy and sad. These predictions were borne out, in a comparison with a group of normal children and in a group of subjects with mental handicap. This result shows the importance of fine-grain analysis in emotion-recognition tasks, and is discussed in relation to affective and theory of mind models of autism. (shrink)

The decline of empathy among health professional students, highlighted in the literature on health education, is a concern for medical educators. The evidence suggests that empathy decline is likely to stem more from structural problems in the healthcare system rather than from individual deficits of empathy. In this paper, we argue that a focus on direct empathy development is not effective and possibly detrimental to justice-oriented aims. Drawing on critical and narrative theory, we propose an interpersonal approach to enhance empathic (...) capacities that is centered on constructive and transformative interactions which integrates the participatory arts and involves both patients and health professional students. We describe and evaluate a program where patients and students create collaborative, original songs. Interviews and a focus group revealed interactional processes summarized in four themes: reciprocal relationships, interactions in the community, joint goal, and varied collaboration. There was a significant enhancement of positive attitudes about care post-program amongst health professional students. The interpersonal approach may be a preliminary framework for the medical humanities to shift away from a focus on direct empathy development and further towards participatory, co-creative, and justice-oriented approaches to enhance health and thereby empathic capabilities. (shrink)

This study investigates the malleability of the eyewitness memory by analyzing the effects of Memory Conformity and Cross-Race Effect (CRE) among Asian ethnic groups. A live crime enactment (snatch theft) was initiated in order to assess both variables. Two experiments were conducted using a questionnaire with a total of 36 participants in a private university. Experiment 1 examined the effects of group conformity. After the live enactment and the filler task, participants were randomly assigned to one of two (...) conditions: discussed and no discussed groups. All participants were given a questionnaire and was informed to complete it individually. Experiment 2 examined the cross-race effect. Participants were informed to answer the questionnaire individually and the results were analyzed based on the racial identity. No difference in memory accuracy was found between discussed and no discussed conditions in the experiment 1. However, in experiment 2, a disparate racial identity effect was found opposing the past literature. (shrink)

How will we as feminists theorize these borders? How will we as beings whose very bodies are objects of globalization theorize a border which we dwell within? Ofelia Shutte asks whether it is “possible for Western feminism to disentangle itself from the historical forces of Western colonialism and from the erasure of otherness that such forces entail? (Shutte 2000, 59) I ask whether it is possible for feminism, Western or non-Western, Northern or Southern, to utilize the theoretical and political resource (...) that others, who are “othered” on both sides of the border, offer to feminist struggle. (shrink)

Abstract The phenomenological approach to racialization needs to be supplemented by a hermeneutics that examines the history of the various categories in terms of which people see and have seen race. An investigation of this kind suggests that instead of the rigid essentialism that is normally associated with the history of racism, race predominantly operates as a border concept, that is to say, a dynamic fluid concept whose core lies not at the center but at its edges. I (...) illustrate this by an examination of the history of the distinctions between the races as it is revealed in legal, scientific, and philosophical sources. I focus especially on racial distinctions in the United States and on the way that the impact of miscegenation was negotiated leading to the so-called one-drop rule. (shrink)

We discuss four methodological issues regarding cross-cultural judgment studies of facial expressions of emotion involving design, sampling, stimuli, and dependent variables. We use examples of relatively recent studies in this area to highlight and discuss these issues. We contend that careful consideration of these, and other, cross-cultural methodological issues can help researchers minimize methodological errors, and can guide the field to address new and different research questions that can continue to facilitate an evolution in the field’s thinking (...) about the nature of culture, emotion, and facial expressions. (shrink)

The mutual interaction and interdependence of race, class, and gender create profound political dilemmas for feminist activists. How can we create coherent, inclusive political movements when the very oppressions we seek to dismantle also divide us internally? This article seeks answers to this question by exploring the history of the Southeast Women's Employment Coalition, which throughout the 1980s sought to unify working-class women in the South across the divide of race. The article concludes that gender is insufficient to (...) effect political unity among racially diverse women, but that a “politics of solidarity,” based on an appreciation of the intersections of race, gender, and class, is possible. (shrink)

Background: Clinical and experimental findings have suggested that insomnia is associated with altered emotion processing, such as facial emotion recognition and impairments in executive functions. However, the results still appear non-consensual and have recently been presented by a few number of studies. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether patients with Insomnia disorder will present alterations in recognition of facial emotions and that such alterations will be related to Executive Functions and that Insomnia Disorder (...) patients will exhibit a lower Executive Functions performance when compared to normal controls individuals. Method: A total of 11 individuals diagnosed with insomnia disorder and 15 control participants took part in the present cross-sectional study. They completed questionnaires covering socio-demographic data, a sleep and mood evaluation, and a cognitive assessment. Moreover, they underwent a computerized Facial Emotional Recognition test, consisting of facial emotion labeling and facial emotion matching. Results: Individuals with insomnia presented a lower recognition of facial expressions of fear and sadness in comparison to control volunteers. Perceptual Organization Index was found to be statistically significant lower in the insomnia group compared to the control group. There was a statistically significant association between facial recognition emotional and cognitive processes of in executive functions performance, especially in processes related to the inhibitory control, planning capacity, problem solving and cognitive flexibility in insomnia group. Conclusions: Insomnia disorder impairs the facial emotion recognition of the fear and sadness. Insomniacs with impairment in the facial emotion recognition had impaired performance of executive functions. There is a negative impact on processes related to cognitive-emotional capacity than on processes related to social-emotional recognition. Keywords: insomnia, facial emotional recognition, sleep deprivation, cognition, executive functions. (shrink)

In line with the cross ethnical alliances that the Eurasian community stands for, in this paper we interrogate the possibility of meaningful ways to transcend ‘race’ through the application of critical thinking skills. The methodology proposed combines a brief historical summary of how race has been articulated in history and in science until the discovery of Human DNA with some references to the field of Race Studies. As a social value category, it will be demonstrated that (...) ’race’ has no scientific evidence. In the pursuit of objectively demonstrating that what unites us as humans is much more than what separates us, critical thinking can help us to go beyond nationality and transcend classifications. In doing so, a critical mindset will be underlined as a necessary requirement to increase the degree of rigorous and truthful information generated from the sciences and humanities in the advancement of one human race within Eurasian community and beyond. (shrink)

Understanding the very nature of the smile with an integrative approach and a novel model is a fertile ground for a new theoretical vision and insights. However, from this perspective, I challenge the authors to integrate culture and race in their model, because both factors would impact upon the embodying and decoding of facial expressions.

This study explored how congruency between facial mimicry and observed expressions affects the stability of conscious facial expression representations. Focusing on the congruency effect between proprioceptive/sensorimotor signals and visual stimuli for happy expressions, participants underwent a binocular rivalry task displaying neutral and happy faces. Mimicry was either facilitated with a chopstick or left unrestricted. Key metrics included Initial Percept (bias indicator), Onset Resolution Time (time from onset to Initial Percept), and Cumulative Time (content stabilization measure). Results indicated that (...) mimicry manipulation significantly impacted Cumulative Time for happy faces, highlighting the importance of congruent mimicry in stabilizing conscious awareness of facial expressions. This supports embodied cognition models, showing the integration of proprioceptive information significantly biases conscious visual perception of facial expressions. (shrink)

This essay is a defense of the social construction of racialism. I follow a standard definition of “racialism” which is the belief that “there are heritable characteristics, possessed by members of our species, that allow us to divide them into a small set of races, in such a way that all the members of these races share certain traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with other members of any other race”. In particular I want (...) to defend the “radical” social-constructive thesis that holds “the concept of race is exclusively the product of historical and cultural causes. It claims that humans do not tend to classify people into races when groups with different phenotypes meet, save for particular historical circumstances”. The quoted position is the consensus view among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists who study racialism but has recently been criticized by philosophical defenders of cognitive/evolutionary psychological approaches to racialism. Drawing on developmental studies as well as historical and contemporary cross-cultural research, CEP philosophers point to similarities of racialism across time and space. They hold that social constructionist approaches to racialism cannot explain these similarities. I hold that SC approaches do explain these similarities and that such similarities actually pose a significant challenge to the proposed CEP research program on racialism. (shrink)

An assessment of mood or emotion is important in developing mental health measures, and facial expressions are strongly related to mood or emotion. This study thus aimed to examine the relationship between levels of negative mood and characteristics of mouth parts when moods are drawn as facial expressions on a common platform. A cross-sectional study of Japanese college freshmen was conducted, and 1,068 valid responses were analyzed. The questionnaire survey consisted of participants’ characteristics, the Profile of Mood (...) States, and a sheet of facial expression drawing, and the sheet was digitized and analyzed using an image-analysis software. Based on the total POMS score as an index of negative mood, the participants were divided into four groups: low, normal, high, and very high. Lengths of drawn lines and between both mouth corners were significantly longer, and circularity and roundness were significantly higher in the L group. With increasing levels of negative mood, significant decreasing trends were observed in these lengths. Convex downward and enclosed figures were significantly predominant in the L group, while convex upward figures were significantly predominant and a tendency toward predominance of no drawn mouths or line figures was found in the H and VH groups. Our results suggest that mood states can be significantly related to the size and figure characteristics of drawn mouths of FACED on a non-verbal common platform. That is, these findings mean that subjects with low negative mood may draw a greater and rounder mouth and figures that may be enclosed and downward convex, while subjects with a high negative mood may not draw the line, or if any, may draw the line shorter and upward convex. (shrink)

Facial recognition is an artificial intelligence-based technology that, like many other forms of artificial intelligence, suffers from an accuracy deficit. This paper focuses on one particular use of facial recognition, namely identification, both as authentication and as recognition. Despite technological advances, facial recognition technology can still produce erroneous identifications. This paper addresses algorithmic identification failures from an upstream perspective by identifying the main causes of misidentifications (in particular, the probabilistic character of this technology, its ‘black box’ (...) nature and its algorithmic bias) and from a downstream perspective, highlighting the possible legal consequences of such failures in various scenarios (namely liability lawsuits). In addition to presenting the causes and effects of such errors, the paper also presents measures that can be deployed to reduce errors and avoid liabilities. (shrink)

Facial attributes such as race, sex, and age can interact with emotional expressions; however, only a couple of studies have investigated the nature of the interaction between facial age cues and emotional expressions and these have produced inconsistent results. Additionally, these studies have not addressed the mechanism/s driving the influence of facial age cues on emotional expression or vice versa. In the current study, participants categorised young and older adult faces expressing happiness and anger or sadness (...) by their age and their emotional expression. Age cues moderated categorisation of happiness vs. anger and sadness in the absence of an influence of emotional expression on age categorisation times. This asymmetrical interaction suggests that facial age cues are obligatorily processed prior to emotional expressions. Finding a categorisation advantage for happiness expressed on young faces relative to both anger and sadness which are negative in valence but different in their congruence with old age stereotypes or structural overlap with age cues suggests that the observed influence of facial age cues on emotion perception is due to the congruence between relatively positive evaluations of young faces and happy expressions. (shrink)

Prior studies provide consistent evidence of deficits for psychopaths in processing verbal emotional material but are inconsistent regarding nonverbal emotional material. To examine whether psychopaths exhibit general versus specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing, 34 psychopaths and 33 nonpsychopaths identified with Hare's (R. D. Hare, 1991) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised were asked to complete a facial affect recognition test. Slides of prototypic facial expressions were presented. Three hypotheses regarding hemispheric lateralization anomalies in psychopaths were also tested (right-hemisphere dysfunction, reduced lateralization, (...) and reversed lateralization). Psychopaths were less accurate than nonpsychopaths at classifying facial affect under conditions promoting reliance on right-hemisphere resources and displayed a specific deficit in classifying disgust. These findings demonstrate that psychopaths exhibit specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing. (shrink)

To define the determinants of impaired facial emotion recognition (FER) in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy associated with hippocampal sclerosis (MTLE-HS), we examined 76 patients with unilateral MTLE-HS, 36 prior to antero-mesial temporal lobectomy (AMTL) and 40 after AMTL, and 28 healthy control subjects with a FER test consisting of 60 items (20 each for anger, fear, and happiness). Mean percentages of the accurate responses were calculated for different subgroups: right vs. left MTLE-HS, early (age at onset <6 (...) years) vs. late-onset, and before vs. after AMTL. After controlling for years of education, duration of epilepsy and number of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) taken, on multivariate analysis, fear recognition was profoundly impaired in early-onset right MTLE-HS patients compared to other MTLE patients and control subjects. Happiness recognition was significantly better in post-AMTL MTLE-HS patients compared to pre-AMTL patients while anger and fear recognition did not differ. We conclude that patients with right MTLE-HS with age at seizure onset <6 years are maximally predisposed to impaired fear recognition. In them, right AMTL does not further worsen FER abilities. Longitudinal studies comparing FER in the same patients before and after AMTL will be required to refine and confirm our cross-sectional observations. (shrink)

The “scarred villain” trope, where facial differences like scars signify moral corruption, is ubiquitous in film (e.g., Batman’s The Joker). Strides by advocacy groups to undermine the trope, however, suggest cinematic representations of facial differences could be improving with time. This preregistered study characterized facial differences in film across cultures (US vs. India) and time (US: 1980-2019, India: 2000-2019). Top-grossing films by country and decade were screened for characters with facial differences. We found that the scarred (...) villain trope has actually worsened with time, although in tandem with progress in also representing non-villainous characters with facial anomalies. Country of origin did not predict the presence of facial differences in villains or heroes. “Action” and “fantasy” movies were the most likely genres to depict villains with facial differences. Finally, villains’ facial differences crossed more facial subunits and were more likely to involve lips, chin, and mandible than when present in heroes. Our findings underscore the need for critical reflection on the role of cultural practices—even when seemingly innocuous—in shaping and maintaining negative biases against already stigmatized groups. (shrink)

We used multiple methods to examine two questions about emotion and culture: (1) Which facial expressions are recognised cross-culturally; and (2) does the “forced-choice” method lead to spurious findings of universality? Forty participants in the US and 40 in India were shown 14 facial expressions and asked to say what had happened to cause the person to make the face. Analyses of the social situations given and of the affect words spontaneously used showed high levels of recognition (...) for most of the expressions. A subsequent forced-choice task using the same faces confirmed these findings. Analysis of the pattern of magnitude, discreteness, and similarity of responses across cultures and expressions led to the conclusion that there is no neat distinction between cross-culturally recognisable and nonrecognisable expressions. Results are better described as a gradient of recognition. (shrink)

Reading Scripture in multicultural settings requires an awareness of racial/ethnic, cultural, social class, and theological assumptions. This essay identifies common pitfalls to individual and group discovery of good news in Scripture, and presents effective pedagogies and communication strategies to facilitate transformational encounters with God in diverse settings. The essay concludes with a tried and tested step-by-step dramatic reenactment of John 8:1–11.

People often judge trustworthiness based on others’ faces (e.g., facial expression and facial gender). However, it is unclear whether social context plays a moderating role in forming trustworthiness judgments. Based on the emotions as social information (EASI) model, differing contexts may impact the effect of facial expression; however, there is no evidence demonstrating that differing contexts will or will not influence the effect of facial gender. In this study, we used two experiments to examine how (...) class='Hi'>facial expression and facial gender affect facial trustworthiness judgments and whether the effects on facial trustworthiness judgments are consistent in cooperative and competitive settings. Twenty-seven undergraduates (14 female; Mage = 21.81 years, SD = 2.66) participated in experiment 1. The results showed significant main effects of facial expression and facial gender as well as the interaction between them. To examine the social context effect, 28 undergraduates (18 female; Mage = 20.93 years, SD = 2.94) participated in experiment 2. The results showed the main effects of facial expression, facial gender, and social context. Moreover, there was a significant interaction between facial gender and facial expression and a marginally significant interaction between social context and facial expression. These results suggest that in the process of judging facial trustworthiness, individuals’ judgments are affected by both facial expression and facial gender. Furthermore, the effect of facial gender on facial trustworthiness judgments presents cross-situational stability, and the role of facial expression is influenced by the settings. These findings support and expand the EASI model. (shrink)

Most research on cross-cultural emotion recognition has focused on facial expressions. To integrate the body of evidence on vocal expression, we present a meta-analysis of 37 cross-cultural studies...