Social perception alternates between top-down category-based and bottom-up personalized modes

Evidence

The more cognitive side of my program of research on intergroup relations began with work on stereotypes as prototypic representations of social categories. Supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging, I tested these ideas on stereotypes of the elderly (Brewer, Dull, & Lui, 1981). My research on the structure and consequences of social stereotyping culminated in a theory paper presenting a “dual process” model of social information processing (Brewer, 1988). The model postulates a distinction between category-based social perception (which is a top-down process driven by categorization and subcategorization) and personalized social perception (which is a bottom-up processing mode driven by self-referencing). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2488

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the dual-process model distinguishing category-based (top-down) from personalized (bottom-up) social perception.