The Iterative Nature of Person Construal: Evidence from Event-related Potentials

Recently, a dynamic-interactive model of person construal (DI model) has been proposed, whereby the social categories a person represents are determined on the basis of an iterative integration of bottom-up and top-down influences. The current study sought to test this model by leveraging the high temporal resolution of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as 65 participants viewed male faces that varied by race (White vs Black), fixating either between the eyes or on the forehead. Within face presentations, the effect of fixation, meant to vary bottom-up visual input, initially was large but decreased across early latency neural responses identified by a principal components analysis (PCA). In contrast, the effect of race, reflecting a combination of top-down and bottom-up factors, initially was small but increased across early latency principal components. These patterns support the DI model prediction that bottom-up and top-down processes are iteratively integrated to arrive at a stable construal within 230 ms. Additionally, exploratory multilevel modeling of single trial ERP responses representing a component linked to outgroup categorization (the P2) suggests change in effects of the manipulations over the course of the experiment. Implications of the findings for the DI model are considered.