There's More To First Impressions

   This article from the Harvard Gazette caught my eye because of our current study of the brain in physiology class. It essentially summarizes the fact that our brain's first impression of others is not always what we are consciously thinking of them. The area of the brain now called the fusiform face area (FFA) subconsciously interprets both the gender and the sex of the face that is being looking at. Even when a subject is told only to think about the race of the person, the brain's natural function forces it to store the sex of the person as well. The way that this was discovered was through the use of function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which recoded images of the brain's response to different visual stimuli; these pictures were then able to be compared to one another.
   One of the most interesting aspects of this article is the explanation that is given for why our brains seem to interpret visual information in this way. Researchers suggest that it may be linked back to many centuries ago when it was custom to act differently around those of a different race or gender. This, in turn, is saying that it is almost ingrained in human nature to compare oneself to others from the get-go. Our minds search for some trait of familiarity and seek to store identity from there.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/10/whats-in-a-face/