The prestigious CAREER Awards are presented nationwide to junior faculty who “exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations,” according to the NSF website.

A highly competitive grant award designed to establish a “lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research,” the CAREER Award is considered a clear indication of achievement. A number of UNLV faculty have received this prestigious award through the years; here is the story of one of them.

Jennifer Rennels, Psychology

Everyone loves to look at babies. But what do babies think when they look back at us? Jennifer Rennels hopes to find out through her CAREER Award research.

She examines how infants experience seeing faces and how this affects their preferences for different people.

Though it’s challenging to know what babies are thinking, Rennels and her team gauge infant interest by determining what faces they tend to look at on a computer screen.

“In visual preference studies, we show infants’ two novel faces that differ on one aspect – for example, gender – but are similar in all other aspects, such as emotional expression, age, race, attractiveness, or brightness/contrast,” she says. “If they look longer at one face relative to the other, it demonstrates a visual preference for that face.”

She notes the team can glean a surprising amount of information from their little subjects, including their ability to scan and categorize faces, as well as to recognize and prefer certain faces.

“Most people are surprised to learn that infants differ in their behavioral responses to individuals based on such facial cues,” she says. “Person perception emerges very early in development and is heavily influenced by infants’ experience with faces.”

What is the impact of this research?

Understanding face perception and the stereotypes associated with facial cues is integral to understanding the social interactions people experience every day, Rennels says. Studying this process in infants provides insights into how and why stereotypes develop.

Within a very short period of time, individuals can assess a person’s sex, race, age, attractiveness, dominance, and emotion, Rennels notes, adding that this assessment influences how individuals respond to, treat, and judge others.

Given the growing diversity of the American population, Rennels says, it is essential for people to understand factors influencing judgments and reactions to individuals based on group membership. Such information is critical in terms of raising awareness about diverse groups and ensuring that our communities are socially sustainable.

“Categorizing people is necessary before an individual can form stereotypes,” she says. “Infants’ facial recognition abilities and visual preferences for faces are related to face categorization skills. Understanding some of these precursors to stereotype development can therefore provide information about how and why stereotypes develop,” Rennels says.

“Given the deleterious effects of many stereotypes, it is my hope the research findings can be used to raise awareness about these stereotypes and perhaps be applied to help reduce the negative outcomes of stereotyping.”

Rennels has received more than $560,000 total in grant funding. Prior to receiving the NSF CAREER grant, she was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She also received two internal grants at UNLV, the New Investigator Award, and a College of Liberal Arts Center for Advanced Research Award.

How did she become interested in this area of study?

“When I was a graduate student, my mentor was investigating if infants could recognize an ‘averaged’ face, which is a mathematical average of faces, after being familiarized to several female or male faces,” Rennels says. “With female faces, we found they could recognize the average, but despite numerous changes in methodology, we found no evidence that infants could recognize an average of male faces. These results suggest that infants were able to form a summary representation of female faces, but not male faces. I became very interested in exploring reasons for this; one very likely contributing factor is a real-world discrepancy in infant experience with female and male faces.”

How are students involved?

This research and her other projects have provided scientific training opportunities for more than 100 undergraduate students since the project started.

“The nature of the research attracts diverse students to work in my lab,” she says. “My graduate students and I have a strong commitment to providing a research environment in which all students feel valued and subsequently can benefit from their training.”

Currently, six graduate students and 11 undergraduate students work in her lab. “Right now, we are collecting data for approximately 23 different research projects, so my students have a lot to juggle,” she says, adding that they are very hard-working, dedicated to the lab, thoughtful about the projects, and eager to learn. “These research projects have provided each of my graduate students opportunities to ‘honcho’ projects, which means they assist with study design and setup, oversee undergraduate student training and data collection, conduct data analyses, and serve as authors on any presentations or published manuscripts resulting from the research. My graduate students are therefore gaining critical skills in managing a research project from beginning to end.”

What other areas does she study?

“All my research is related to understanding face perception and/or stereotypes,” Rennels says. With her graduate students, she conducts research on several areas: 1) factors that affect children’s recognition of others’ emotions and how emotion recognition affects children’s decision-making in social situations; 2) how changes in self-development affect children’s face processing; 3) development of racial stereotypes and the most appropriate measures for tapping into children’s concepts about race; 4) ways to reduce racial stereotypes in adults; 5) the relationship between facial appearance, personal attributes, and physical and mental health in adults and children; and 6) the relationship between a person’s attractiveness and emotional expressivity and how and if it develops.

How does she feel about receiving the NSF Career Award?

“I was honored and excited to receive the award,” Rennels says. “It has played a substantial role in my professional growth, my students’ training, and our ability to conduct quality research.”