Nicholas Rule

Assistant Professor, Psychology

Nicholas Rule is Assistant Professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Social Perception and Cognition. Rule’s work examines questions regarding person perception, focusing largely on information about individuals that can be accurately extracted from their faces. He has studied many questions surrounding the phenomenon of detecting whether people belong to various perceptually ambiguous groups (e.g., gay/lesbian and straight; Mormon and non-Mormon) based on minimal cues.

Selected Publications

Ding, J. Y. C., & Rule, N. O. (2012). Gay, straight, or somewhere in between: Accuracy and bias in the perception of bisexual faces. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 36, 165-176.

Remedios, J. D., Chasteen, A. L., Rule, N. O., & Plaks, J. E. (2011). Impressions at the intersection of ambiguous and obvious social categories: Does gay + black = likable? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 1312-1315.

Rule, N. O. (2011). The influence of target and perceiver race in the categorization of male sexual orientation.Perception, 40, 830-839.

Rule, N. O., Ishii, K., & Ambady, N., Rosen, K. S. & Hallett, K. C. (2011). Found in translation: Cross-cultural consensus in the accurate categorization of male sexual orientation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 1449-1507.

Rule, N. O., Rosen, K. S., Slepian, M. L., & Ambady, N. (2011). Mating interest improves women’s accuracy in judging male sexual orientation. Psychological Science, 22, 881-886.

Freeman, J. B., Johnson, K. L., Ambady, N., & Rule, N. O. (2010). Sexual orientation perception involves gendered facial cues. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1318-1331.

Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., & Hallett, K. C. (2009). Female sexual orientation is perceived accurately, rapidly, and automatically from the face and its features. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1245-1251.

Rule, N. O., Macrae, C. N., & Ambady, N. (2009). Ambiguous group membership is extracted automatically from faces. Psychological Science, 20, 441-443.

Rule, N. O., & Ambady, N. (2008). Brief exposures: Male sexual orientation is accurately perceived at 50-ms.Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1100-1105.

Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., Adams, R. B., Jr., & Macrae, C. N. (2008). Accuracy and awareness in the perception and categorization of male sexual orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95,1019-1028.

Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., Adams, R. B., Jr., & Macrae, C. N. (2007). Us and them: Memory advantages in perceptually ambiguous groups. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 687-692.