Frisem

Dr. Yuan Chang Leong, Graduate Student, advised by Professor Jamil Zaki, Department of Psychology, Stanford University 

Title:  In the mind of the beholder: Neural correlates of perceiver-driven biases in information processing

Abstract:  People bring to each situation their own predispositions, goals and desires – coloring how they perceive and respond to events in the world. My talk will examine the neural underpinnings of such perceiver-driven biases in information processing. I begin by exploring how desires and wants affect what people see. Specifically, I will present modeling and neuroimaging evidence that motivational influences on perceptual judgments reflect both a bias in responding and a bias in perceptual processing. I then extend the work to a more naturalistic setting, and show how prior beliefs bias the processing of political videos. Together, these studies explore the neural processes involved in biasing information processing, and provide illustrative examples of how the tools of cognitive neuroscience allow us to peer into the mind of the beholder.