Alexander Todorov - Face Value: The Irresistible Influence of First Impressions

Face Value: The Irresistible Influence of First Impressions The scientific story of first impressions–and why the snap character judgments we make from faces are irresistible but usually incorrect. Dr. Todorov’s lab studies how people evaluate their environments and how these evaluations shape perception, decisions, and social interactions. We use multiple methods: from behavioral and fMRI experiments investigating evaluative processes to building of computational models identifying the perceptual properties of objects and faces evoking specific evaluations. Current Lines of Research ∙ Data-driven computational methods for visualizing mental and neural representations ∙ How statistical learning shapes social face perception. ∙ Evaluative processes in the perception of novel 3D objects. ∙ How individual biases can propagate into shared false beliefs.