broadly, freeman investigates how we form social judgments and first impressions. in particular, his work has shown that, because facial cues are often complex and ambiguous, multiple “partial” perceptions must initially compete over fractions of a second. this dynamic competition is argued to be central to the ability to form social judgments. his research has proposed flexible interplay between social cognition and visual perception, and has shown that stereotypes and other kinds of social or emotional knowledge can affect visual processing. an example is how stereotypes become expectations that impact visual prototypes and create distortions in how faces are perceived. his research has demonstrated that tacit assumptions about social groups, emotions, or personality can all influence the way we perceive faces.