Feminist Social Vision: Seeing Through the Lens of Marginalized Perceivers

Abstract

Social vision research, which examines, in part, how humans visually perceive social stimuli, is well-positioned to improve understandings of social inequality. However, social vision research has rarely prioritized the perspectives of marginalized group members. We offer a theoretical argument for diversifying understandings of social perceptual processes by centering marginalized perspectives. We examine (a) how social vision researchers frame their research questions and who these framings prioritize and (b) how perceptual processes (person perception; people perception; perception of social objects) are linked to group membership and thus comprehensively understanding these processes necessitates attention to marginalized perceivers. We discuss how social vision research translates into theoretical advances and to action for reducing negative intergroup consequences (e.g., prejudice). The purpose of this article is to delineate how prioritizing marginalized perspectives in social vision research could develop novel questions, bridge theoretical gaps, and elevate social vision’s translational impact to improve outcomes for marginalized groups. Public Social vision research is a subfield of psychology and vision science which examines how people visually perceive social stimuli and what the downstream consequences of these perceptions are. Social vision work includes, for example, examination of how White people visually perceive racial minorities and how these perceptions lead to social categorizations of racial minorities as outgroups, and therefore contribute to behaviors such as stereotyping and prejudice. Social vision research has rarely prioritized the perspectives of marginalized group members. It therefore cannot fully explain the contributions of perception to intergroup relations, which are necessarily bidirectional. We offer a theoretical argument for diversifying understandings of social perceptual processes by centering marginalized perspectives to understand how people with marginalized identities see their social worlds. We believe that prioritizing these marginalized perspectives has the potential to contribute to the development of a psychological science with heightened capacity to improve the well-being of people with marginalized identities.