Perceptual identification and the cross-race effect

Collaboration to improve cross-race face identification: Wisdom of the multi-racial crowd?

Face identification is particularly prone to error when individuals identify people of a race other than their own - a phenomenon known as the other-race effect (ORE). Here, we show that collaborative "wisdom-of-crowds" decision-making substantially improves face identification accuracy for own- and other-race faces over individuals working alone. In two online experiments, East Asian and White individuals recognized own- and other-race faces as individuals and as part of a collaborative dyad. Collaboration never proved more beneficial in a social setting than when individual identification decisions were combined computationally. The reliable benefit of non-social collaboration may stem from its ability to avoid the potential negative outcomes of group diversity such as conflict. Consistent with this benefit, the racial diversity of collaborators did not influence either general or race-specific face identification accuracy. Our findings suggest that collaboration between two individuals is a promising strategy for improving cross-race face identification that may translate effectively into forensic and eyewitness settings.

Attention and Working Memory Biases to Black and Asian Faces During Intergroup Contexts

Categorizing and individual as a racial ingroup or outgroup member results in processing and memory differences. However, despite processing differences for racial ingroups and outgroups, very little is known about processing of racial ingroup and outgroup members during intergroup contexts. Thus, the present research investigated attention and memory differences for racial ingroup and outgroup members during competition for attention (i.e., intergroup contexts). In experiment 1, event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained while participants completed a working memory task that presented 4 faces (2 Black, 2 White) at once then, following a short delay, were probed to indicate the spatial location of one of the faces. Participants showed better location memory for Black than White faces. During encoding, ERP results revealed differences based on the race of the face in P300 amplitudes, such that there was greater motivated processing when attending to Black faces. At probe, the N170 indicated enhanced early processing of Black faces and greater LPCs were associated with better recollection of Black face location. In a follow-up study using the same task, we examined attention and working memory biases for Asian and White faces in Caucasian and Asian participants. Results for both Caucasian and Asian participants indicated better working memory for Asian relative to White faces. Together, results indicate that during intergroup contexts, racial minority faces capture attention, resulting in better memory for those faces. The study underscores that examining racial biases with single stimuli paradigms obscures important aspects of attention and memory biases during intergroup contexts.

Cross-race correlations in the abilities to match unfamiliar faces

The other-race effect in face identification has been documented widely in memory tasks, but it persists also in identity-matching tasks, in which memory contributions are minimized. Whereas this points to a perceptual locus for this effect, it remains unresolved whether matching performance with same- and other-race faces is driven by shared cognitive mechanisms. To examine this question, this study compared Arab and Caucasian observers' ability to match faces of their own race with their ability to match faces of another race using one-to-one (Experiment 1) and one-to-many (Experiment 2) identification tasks. Across both experiments, Arab and Caucasian observers demonstrated reliable other-race effects at a group level. At an individual level, substantial variation in accuracy was found, but performance with same-race and other-race faces correlated consistently and strongly. This indicates that the abilities to match same- and other-race faces share a common cognitive mechanism.

Own-race faces capture attention faster than other-race faces: evidence from response time and the N2pc

Studies have shown that people are better at recognizing human faces from their own-race than from other-races, an effect often termed the Own-Race Advantage. The current study investigates whether there is an Own-Race Advantage in attention and its neural correlates. Participants were asked to search for a human face among animal faces. Experiment 1 showed a classic Own-Race Advantage in response time both for Chinese and Black South African participants. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), Experiment 2 showed a similar Own-Race Advantage in response time for both upright faces and inverted faces. Moreover, the latency of N2pc for own-race faces was earlier than that for other-race faces. These results suggested that own-race faces capture attention more efficiently than other-race faces.

Attentional Biases and Recognition Accuracy: What Happens When Multiple Own- and Other-Race Faces are Encountered Simultaneously?

Adults recognize own-race faces more accurately than other-race faces. We investigated three characteristics of laboratory investigations hypothesized to minimize the magnitude of the own-race recognition advantage (ORA): lack of competition for attention and instructions that emphasize individuating faces during the study phase, and a lack of uncertainty during the test phase. Across two experiments, participants studied faces individually, in arrays comprising multiple faces and household objects, or in naturalistic scenes (presented on an eye-tracker); they were instructed to remember everything, memorize faces, or form impressions of people. They then completed one of two recognition tasks—an old/new recognition task or a lineup recognition task. Task instructions influenced time spent looking at faces but not the allocation of attention to own- versus other-race faces. The magnitude of the ORA was independent of both task instructions and test protocol, with some modulation by how faces were presented in the study phase. We discuss these results in light of current theories of the ORA.

The other-race effect does not rely on memory: Evidence from a matching task

Viewers are typically better at remembering faces from their own race than from other races; however, it is not yet established whether this effect is due to memorial or perceptual processes. In this study, UK and Egyptian viewers were given a simultaneous face-matching task, in which the target faces were presented upright or upside down. As with previous research using face memory tasks, participants were worse at matching other-race faces than own-race faces and showed a stronger face inversion effect for own-race faces. However, subjects' performance on own and other-race faces was highly correlated. These data provide strong evidence that difficulty in perceptual encoding of unfamiliar faces contributes substantially to the other-race effect and that accounts based entirely on memory cannot capture the full data. Implications for forensic settings are also discussed.