People often think of other people who have died, and yet this is an underexplored area of social psychology. We discuss the ways in which the living think of the dead (e.g., how they remember or imagine them), and how the mental processes and states of the living affect that construal. Moreover, we discuss how thinking of the dead can influence the behaviors and thoughts of the living. Throughout the paper, new hypotheses are laid out, setting an agenda for future research. Moreover, a fundamental question is discussed: Is there something special in how the living think of the dead, or are those thought processes the same as those involved in how the living think of each other?

People are highly skilled at recognizing familiar faces due to the development of identity representations that are invariant to viewpoint and low-level features. However, how such view-invariant representations emerge for unfamiliar faces remains debated. This EEG study examined the neurophysiological basis of face learning, and how viewpoint generalization is shaped by experience (i.e., increasing familiarity) and stimulus realism. Adult participants performed an identity-matching task with novel faces varying along a realism continuum, from photographs to less and more abstract artistic styles (Renaissance vs. Cubism). Identity (same vs. different) and viewpoint (repeated vs. changed) were orthogonally manipulated within face pairs. Early face structural encoding (N170; 150-190 ms) was modulated by face realism and by viewpoint-related perceptual demands. The subsequent N250r (220-270 ms) was sensitive to the formation of viewpoint-invariant identity representations in memory, with different temporal dynamics across face types: viewpoint tolerance increased gradually for photographs with repeated exposure, whereas it emerged earlier for stylized faces. After repeated exposure, a reliable N250r was also observed for unseen, novel views, suggesting that learning supports progressively more stable and potentially more abstract identity representations. These findings are discussed in light of stimulus structure and the role of top-down processes in the formation of view-invariant representations.

Face typicality and distinctiveness are key facial attributes that influence face recognition performance and the formation of social impressions. The present study aimed to provide normative data for these dimensions, offering a useful resource for face recognition research. Using a 7-point Likert scale, adult participants rated 304 front-facing faces from the Glasgow Unfamiliar Face Database (GUFD) for typicality–distinctiveness. Results indicated that the subjective rating method produced reliable estimates, with meaningful variability observed along the typicality–distinctiveness continuum. Highly distinctive faces were more sparsely represented in the database. These norms can support principled stimulus selection and improved methodological control in empirical research with faces.

Faces have been shown to be primarily processed by the right hemisphere, such that there is an advantage in their processing when they are presented in the left portion of the visual field. In the present research, we explore face lateralization in the context of faces in paintings. While prior research in art perception has explored hemispheric asymmetries, the role of a right-hemispheric advantage is still debated. Using a hemifield paradigm, we explored the accuracy of face identification in photographs of real faces, as well as in paintings with different art styles, differing in the extent to which they are realistic (renaissance) or distorted (cubism). Performance for photographs was higher when presented in the left half of the visual field, displaying a right hemisphere lateralization; similarly, a right hemisphere advantage in face processing was found for faces in paintings, regardless of how realistic the art style was. All in all, we found evidence of a right hemisphere advantage across stimuli categories. We consider these in relation to other phenomena in face processing literature (e.g., pareidolia), and discuss implications based on these parallels, namely regarding the time course of face perception.

In this research we explore why people have dualist beliefs about certain psychological phenomena (associating them with the soul or spirit rather than the brain), and the consequences of those beliefs for people’s lay conceptions of what science can and cannot explain about how the mind works. We also explore whether dualist beliefs are intuitive and corrected upon reflection or rather held explicitly. We found that the first-person subjective experience (FPSE) of psychological phenomena predicts the extent to which individuals hold dualist beliefs about them (attributing those phenomena more to the soul/spirit and less to the brain). Our results further suggest that individuals are intuitive dualists, expressing different beliefs when making fast vs. slow judgments about the source of psychological phenomena that are associated with a strong FPSE (e.g., falling in love), with fast judgments leaning more towards the soul/spirit and slow judgments towards the brain. This dissociation is not observed for phenomena that do not elicit a FPSE (e.g., reading a map). Finally, this intuitive dualism has consequences for people’s beliefs about science: Phenomena thought to be anchored on a material basis (i.e., the brain) are believed to be more explainable through science than those that are not (an effect supported by both correlational and experimental evidence).