Navigating the Social World: Universal Dimensions of Evaluation

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Susan T. Fiske, Ph.D., Eugene Higgins Professor, department of psychology, Princeton University

Speaker bio(s)

Susan T. Fiske investigates social cognition, especially cognitive stereotypes and emotional prejudices, at cultural, interpersonal, and neural levels. Author of about 350 articles and chapters, she is most known for theories and research on how people think about each other: the continuum model of impression formation, the power-as-control theory, the ambivalent sexism theory, and the stereotype content model (SCM).

Her current SCM work focuses on the two fundamental dimensions of social cognition, perceived warmth/trustworthiness and perceived competence. Having shown that these are predicted by perceived social structure (respectively cooperation-competition and status), her lab has shown that specific emotions follow each warmth-x-competence quadrant (pride, disgust, envy, pity) and predict specific behaviors (active and passive, help or harm), directed at distinct kinds of individuals and social groups. Using representative sample surveys, lab experiments, and neuro-imaging, her lab focused on varieties of dehumanization predicted by the SCM model: dehumanizing allegedly disgusting homeless people, Schadenfreude toward the enviable rich, as well as paternalistic pity and prescriptive prejudices toward older people, disabled people, and women in traditional roles. Social structural variables drive these social cognitive processes. Her current work describes cross-status interactions.

The U.S. Supreme Court cited Fiske’s gender-bias testimony, and she testified before President Clinton’s Race Initiative Advisory Board. These influenced her edited volume, Beyond Common Sense: Psychological Science in the Courtroom. Currently she is an editor of the Annual Review of Psychology, PNAS, Policy Insights from Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and Handbook of Social Psychology. She has written the upper-level texts Social Beings: Core Motives in Social Psychology (3/e) and Social Cognition: From Brains to Culture (4/e). She also wrote The Human Brand: How We Relate to People, Products, and Companies, which applies her models to how people perceive corporations. Her general-interest book, funded by a Guggenheim and the Russell Sage Foundation, is Envy Up and Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us.

Fiske has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. She has served as president of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and president of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, as well as its FABBS Foundation. Fiske was honored with Princeton’s Mentoring Award. She is the only person so far to have won the three APS Awards: James (basic science), Cattell (applied science), and Mentoring.

Open to

Public

Host

Leslie Vosshall

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Justin Sloboda

Phone

(212) 327-7785

Sponsor

Justin Sloboda
(212) 327-7785
jsloboda@rockefeller.edu

Readings

http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=5724