Abstract
Our prior knowledge of what is about to occur, or perceptual expectations, influences how we perceive and interpret information, including the social context. The general objective of the present investigation was to replicate and extend the research conducted by Barnett et al. (2021) studying how gender stereotype-based expectations modulate the perception and categorization of faces, by employing a mouse tracking technique. To achieve this, mouse movements were continuously recorded while participants categorized the gender and emotion of a series of photos which could be congruent (angry male and happy female) or incongruent (happy male and angry female) with gender stereotypes. On each trial, participants responded by clicking with the mouse on the response buttons located at the top corners of the screen, which indicated the relevant gender or emotion categories. Analyses of the mouse trajectories revealed a higher degree of curvature and complexity while categorizing incongruent faces compared to congruent ones. In addition, Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) applied to the dynamics of mouse trajectories indicated that the impact of stereotypes fluctuated across time, exerting a larger effect towards the end points of movements. Overall, our results replicate and extend previous studies and highlight the advantages of using continuous behavioral recording techniques, in particular mouse tracking, to analyze not only the influence, but also the temporal impact of expectations on social perception and categorization.