Jon Freeman studies split-second social perception—how we use facial cues to instantly categorize other people into social groups (e.g., gender and race) and perceive their personality traits and emotion. He treats social perception as a fundamentally dynamic process, and is interested in how basic visual perceptions can be shaped by prior social knowledge, stereotypes, and other aspects of social cognition. He uses a wide range of brain and behavior-based techniques to study the interplay of visual and social processes in rapid person judgment, including the roles of specific facial cues, social context, and individual differences. He additionally examines how the brain represents social categories and core trait dimensions, and how initial perceptions influence downstream behavior and real-world outcomes. He is also the developer of the data collection and analysis software, MouseTracker.