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In the present research, we examined the contributions of recollection and familiarity in memory for own- and other-race faces. In Experiment 1, we used a repetition lag paradigm (Jennings & Jacoby, 1997) to demonstrate the typical cross-race effect with respect to discrimination accuracy and response bias. Participants were more likely to commit repetition errors by falsely recognizing repeated other-race faces. In Experiment 2, we used process-dissociation equations to estimate differences in recollection and familiarity. As predicted, results showed a greater reliance on recollection-based processing for own-race faces. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
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The cross-race effect (CRE) is the robust finding that
memory for faces of one’s own race is superior to mem-
ory for faces of another, less familiar race. Malpass and
Kravitz (1969) first demonstrated the effect in recognition
memory for white and black faces, and since then it has
been demonstrated in numerous publications to be a robust
and practically important phenomenon (for a recent meta-
analytic review, see Meissner & Brigham, 2001). A number
of social–cognitive theories have been proposed to account
for the CRE in face recognition (see Meissner & Brigham,
2001; Sporer, 2001). Some researchers have proposed that
interracial contact may account for differences in memory
for own- and other-race faces (Brigham & Malpass, 1985;
Wright, Boyd, & Tredoux, 2003). Although several studies
have shown that individuals’ geographic location (and their
related degree of racial mixture) can predict performance
on own- versus other-race faces (cf. Chiroro, Tredoux,
Radaelli, & Meissner, 2008; Chiroro & Valentine, 1995),
self-report measures of interracial contact have shown only
small effects (see Meissner & Brigham, 2001). Other re-
searchers have proposed that differences in categorization
processes may be at play, whereby other-race faces are
categorized quickly at the expense of encoding individuat-
ing information (Levin, 1996, 2000; MacLin & Malpass,
2001). Still others (Sporer, 2001; Valentine, 1991, 2001)
have argued that the CRE may lie in differing represen-
tational structures to the extent that own-race faces are
more appropriately encoded and represented by diagnostic
feature classifications. These representational differences
may arise as a function of differing encoding strategies,
such as configural or featural processing (Rhodes, Tan,
Brake, & Taylor, 1989), although it has been suggested in
recent studies that own-race faces may be processed to a
greater extent using both configural and componential de-
tails (see Rhodes, Hayward, & Winkler, 2006).
Recently, Meissner, Brigham, and Butz (2005) sought
to apply dual-process theory to distinguish these various
explanations of the effect. In dual-process theories, recog-
nition memory is composed of two independent memory
systems—namely, recollection and familiarity (Jacoby,
1991; Tulving, 1985; for a review, see Yonelinas, 2002).
Recollection generally reflects a controlled, effortful pro-
cess in which one is able to recall specific details about a
memorial episode. Familiarity, in contrast, is a more fluid,
automatic process characterized by a feeling of familiarity
without any specific recollection. A variety of paradigms
have been developed in order to assess these two processes,
including process-dissociation tasks (Jacoby, 1991; Kelley
& Jacoby, 2000), receiver-operating characteristic analy-
sis (Yonelinas, 1994, 1999), and remember–know–guess
judgments (Gardiner & Richardson-Klavehn, 2000).
Given previous research suggesting that effortful en-
coding, divided attention, and distinctiveness manipu-
lations influence recollection but not familiarity (see
Yonelinas, 2002), Meissner, Brigham, and Butz (2005)
predicted that an encoding or representational basis for
the CRE would result in a recollection advantage for own-
race faces. Such a prediction is supported by research in-
dicating that the CRE is sensitive to variation in facial
distinctiveness (Chiroro & Valentine, 1995; Sporer, 2001;
Valentine, 1991, 2001), as well as to the influence of racial
categorization in diverting attentional resources from suc-
cessful encoding (Levin, 1996, 2000; MacLin & Malpass,
2001). In contrast, differences in familiarity might result
if the CRE is due to stereotyping of other-race faces, if
own-race faces are processed in a configural manner, or
99 © 2009 The Psychonomic Society, Inc.
Assessing the influence of recollection
and familiarity in memory for
own- versus other-race faces
JESSICA L. MARCON, KYLE J. SUSA, AND CHRISTIAN A. MEISSNER
University of Texas, El Paso, Texas
In the present research, we examined the contributions of recollection and familiarity in memory for own- and
other-race faces. In Experiment 1, we used a repetition lag paradigm (Jennings & Jacoby, 1997) to demonstrate
the typical cross-race effect with respect to discrimination accuracy and response bias. Participants were more
likely to commit repetition errors by falsely recognizing repeated other-race faces. In Experiment 2, we used
process-dissociation equations to estimate differences in recollection and familiarity. As predicted, results
showed a greater reliance on recollection-based processing for own-race faces. The theoretical and practical
implications of these findings are discussed.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
2009, 16 (1), 99-103
doi:10.3758/PBR.16.1.99
C. A. Meissner, cmeissner@utep.edu
100 MARCON, SUSA, AND MEISSNER
(1997). In their “repetition lag paradigm,” young and old
participants were presented a series of items at encoding
that they would be subsequently asked to recognize from
among a set of novel items. However, at recognition, the
experimenters also repeated novel items at varying lags
(or intervals), and participants were instructed to appro-
priately recognize these repeated items as distinct from
those they had viewed at study. This repetition of novel
items at test placed recollection and familiarity in op-
position. Specifically, Jennings and Jacoby argued that
the successful recognition of these repeated items as new
required recollection of their prior presentation on the
test list (as opposed to on the study list), whereas a failure
of recollection and a reliance upon perceived familiarity
would lead to a misattribution of old. Using this para-
digm, Jennings and Jacoby showed that older adults were
more likely to commit a repetition error, replicating prior
studies suggesting that the ability to recollect is reduced
as we age.
In a second experiment, Jennings and Jacoby (1997)
refined the procedure to allow for the use of process-
dissociation equations to directly estimate recollection and
familiarity. More specifically, participants were instructed
to either exclude (say “no”) or include (say “yes”) repeated
novel items at test. Although participants could respond
yes to an inclusion trial on the basis of both recollection
and familiarity (facilitation condition), exclusion trials
were designed to place recollection and familiarity in op-
position (opposition condition). Specifically, responding
no to an exclusion trial required that participants be able to
recollect the prior presentation of the face, whereas a yes
response would likely be a product of context-free famil-
iarity. Using this opposition procedure, Jennings and Ja-
coby were able to compute recollection and familiarity via
process-dissociation equations (see Jacoby, 1991). Once
again, their results confirmed differences in recollection-
based processing as a function of age, but they found no
effect of familiarity.
In the present experiments, we sought to apply the Jen-
nings and Jacoby (1997) framework to examine differ-
ences in recollection and familiarity in the recognition of
own- and other-race faces. In Experiment 1, we assessed
the extent to which participants commit repetition errors
to a greater degree when recognizing other-race faces,
whereas in Experiment 2, we more directly estimated
the contributions of recollection and familiarity using
process-dissociation equations. Consistent with prior
research by Meissner, Brigham, and Butz (2005), it was
predicted that participants would demonstrate repetition
errors to a greater extent with other-race faces and that a
failure of recollection would be responsible for the differ-
ences in processing own- and other-race faces.
EXPERIMENT 1
Method
Participants
. Fifty-four Hispanic students (58% female, mean
age 19.24 years) from the University of Texas at El Paso partici-
pated in this experiment.
Materials
. The facial stimuli used in this study included 25 His-
panic males and 25 African-American males. Two different photo-
if a shift in criterion is responsible for the effect. For ex-
ample, it has been suggested that stereotyping responses
tend to be rather automatic (Dasgupta, McGhee, Green-
wald, & Banaji, 2000) and are thus supported by an “ac-
cessibility bias” that is under limited conscious control
(Payne, Lambert, & Jacoby, 2002). As such, other-race
faces may involve a greater familiarity response at the
time of recognition. With regard to configural process-
ing (or the representation of associations between internal
facial features), Yonelinas, Kroll, Dobbins, and Soltani
(1999) found that inversion effects appear to be isolated to
familiarity-based processing. If configural processing is
influenced by inversion and is dominant in own-race face
recognition (Rhodes et al., 1989), we might expect greater
familiarity-based processing to occur for own-race faces.
Finally, it is worth noting that shifts in response criterion
are generally captured by differences in familiarity-based
responding (Yonelinas, 2001). If a more liberal response
bias is chiefly responsible for the CRE (see Sporer, 2001),
we might expect greater estimates of familiarity to be as-
sociated with responses to other-race faces.
Using a dual-process framework, Meissner, Brigham,
and Butz (2005) asked participants to complete a stan-
dard recognition paradigm involving the presentation of
both own- and other-race faces, and to provide remember–
know–guess judgments at the time of recognition. In this
paradigm, when participants responded that they recog-
nized a face from the study list, they were also asked to
provide a judgment of either remember (they can recollect
details of the study episode), know (they cannot recollect
specific details, but report a general feeling of familiar-
ity), or guess (they have no memory or experience of fa-
miliarity and are simply guessing). Meissner, Brigham,
and Butz’s results suggested that remember judgments (or
recollection-based processing) were significantly greater
in number when discriminating own-race faces (compared
with when discriminating other-race faces), whereas no
differences in know (corrected for independence) or guess
judgments were observed. Meissner, Brigham, and Butz
interpreted these findings to support those theories that
argued that attentional, encoding, and representational
differences lead to the CRE.
One potential criticism lodged against the remember–
know–guess procedure is that these judgments may not,
in fact, index recollection and familiarity, but that they
are, rather, indicators of confidence (Dunn, 2004). Ad-
ditionally, feelings of remembering and knowing may not
necessarily be indices of separable memory categories,
such as recollection and familiarity in the dual-process
memory literature, but instead may be the result of stimu-
lus construction, context, experimental task, expectations
regarding performance, or other aspects of the experience
that the participants deem relevant (e.g., Bodner & Lind-
say, 2003). Given the various concerns expressed, the goal
of the present research was to replicate previous research
findings regarding the role of recollection in own- versus
other-race face recognition using an alternative, process-
dissociation paradigm.
Our search for an appropriate process-dissociation
paradigm led us to the work of Jennings and Jacoby
CROSS -RACE EFFECT 101
to directly estimate the contributions of recollection and
familiarity.
EXPERIMENT 2
Method
Participants
. Twenty-two Hispanic undergraduate students (65%
female, mean age 19.61 years) from the University of Texas at
El Paso participated in this experiment.
Materials
. The facial stimuli chosen for this study included 48
Hispanic and 48 African-American faces. The presentation of stim-
uli was identical to that employed in Experiment 1.
Design and Procedure
. A single-factor (race of target face: own
vs. other race) within-subjects design was employed. Once again,
the Jennings and Jacoby (1997) repetition lag paradigm was used.
Twenty-four faces (12 Hispanic and 12 African-American) were
presented in the study phase for a period of 2 sec with a 1-sec ISI.
Following the encoding phase, participants solved anagram prob-
lems for 3 min before beginning the test phase. In the recognition
task, participants completed two phases in which they were asked
to exclude and include novel faces that were repeated in the test
list. Specifically, during exclude trials, participants were asked to
respond yes to old faces, no to new faces when initially presented,
and no to any repetition of a new face that occurred at test. During
include trials, participants were asked to respond yes to old faces,
no to new faces when initially presented, and yes to any repetition
of a new face that occurred at test. Lags of 4 and 6 faces separated
novel and repeated faces. The presentation of exclusion and inclu-
sion phases was counterbalanced across participants, faces within
each phase were randomized across participants, and faces were not
repeated across exclusion and inclusion trials.
Results and Discussion
Recognition performance
. A significant CRE was
observed in estimates of false alarms [t(21) 5.96, p
.001, d 1.46], discrimination accuracy [t(21) 8.51,
p .001, d 1.39], and response criterion [t(21) 3.26,
p .01, d .52]. Once again, participants were signifi-
cantly better at discriminating own-race faces from mem-
ory and were more liberal when responding to other-race
faces. Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations
for all measures across own- and other-race faces.
graphs for each face were available: An image of each target face
smiling was used at the time of study, whereas another image, in
which the target face had a neutral expression, was used at test. All
clothing was cropped from the photographs, such that only the face
of the target was visible. The experiment was performed on PC com-
puters running Medialab software, with images displayed on 19-in.
LCD monitors using a 1,280 1,024 pixel resolution.
Design and Procedure
. A single-factor (race of face: own vs.
other race) within-subjects design was employed. The Jennings
and Jacoby (1997) repetition lag paradigm was used. The partici-
pants viewed a sequence of 30 faces (15 Hispanic and 15 African-
American) during the study phase and were instructed that they
would later be asked to recognize these faces. Faces were presented
for 3 sec each at encoding, with a 1-sec interstimulus interval (ISI),
and presentation order was randomized for each participant. Im-
mediately following the study phase, the participants completed a
3-min filler task in which they solved a series of anagrams. During
the test phase, the participants were asked to distinguish studied
faces from new faces and repetitions of these new faces with inter-
vening lags of 2, 5, and 7 faces. The participants were instructed to
respond yes to faces that they had viewed at study and no to new
faces and any repetition of a new face that occurred at test. The pre-
sentation of old and new faces was randomized for each participant,
and the assignment of faces to old and new sets (and to varying lags
as new faces) was counterbalanced across participants.
Results and Discussion
A significant CRE was observed in estimates of hits
[t(53) 2.23, p .05, d .35], false alarms [t(53) 5.44,
p .001, d .76], discrimination accuracy [t(53)
5.62, p .001, d .73], and response criterion [t(53)
3.93, p .001, d .36]. Consistent with prior research
(Meissner & Brigham, 2001), a mirror effect pattern was
observed in which participants produced greater hits and
fewer false alarms to own-race faces, resulting in superior
discrimination accuracy. Participants were also more lib-
eral in responding to other-race faces. Of particular inter-
est in the present study was the repetition error rate across
own- and other-race faces. As predicted, results showed
a significant increase in repetition errors for other-race
faces [t(53) 4.04, p .001, d .43].1 Table 1 presents
the means and standard deviations for all measures across
own- and other-race faces.
The results of Experiment 1 replicated the robust CRE
in face recognition and, furthermore, showed that partici-
pants were more likely to commit a repetition error when
processing other-race faces. This error may reflect a fail-
ure of recollection when recognizing other-race faces, or
it could result from greater familiarity-based responding
to other-race faces. In Experiment 2, we sought to apply
Jennings and Jacoby’s (1997) process-dissociation para-
digm to the recognition of own- and other-race faces and
Tab le 1
Means and Standard Deviations of Hits, False Alarms,
Discrimination Accuracy (A
z
), Response Criterion (C), and
Repetition Errors Across Own- and Other-Race Faces in Experiment 1
False Repetition
Hits Alarms AzCErrors
M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD
Own-race faces .70 .14 .12 .16 .90 .10 .52 .52 .19 .19
Other-race faces .64 .20 .25 .18 .78 .14 .24 .56 .30 .18
Tab le 2
Means and Standard Deviations of Hits, False Alarms,
Discrimination Accuracy (A
z
), and Response Criterion (C)
Across Own- and Other-Race Faces in Experiment 2
False
Hits Alarms AzC
M SD M SD M SD M SD
Own-race faces .60 .15 .09 .07 .88 .08 .62 .37
Other-race faces .54 .18 .28 .18 .70 .11 .30 .52
102 MARCON, SUSA, AND MEISSNER
demonstrated the influence of recollection with a His-
panic sample. Although we have no reason to believe that
these results would not generalize to other racial or ethnic
groups, further research demonstrating the generality of
recollection-based processes in accounting for the CRE
would prove useful.
The influence of recollection within the CRE suggests
that own-race faces may be encoded using greater atten-
tional resources and may be represented in memory with
respect to more diagnostic feature sets, leading to supe-
rior recognition. Although this is consistent with several
theories accounting for the CRE (Chiroro & Valentine,
1995; Sporer, 2001; Valentine, 1991, 2001), a process-
dissociation perspective allows us to further make predic-
tions regarding conditions under which the CRE might
be mitigated. For example, situations that disrupt effort-
ful or semantic encoding or that distract participants’ at-
tention at study or recognition should lead to a lessening
of the CRE by reducing performance on own-race faces.
Along similar lines, manipulations that improve encod-
ing may not differentially improve performance on other-
race faces. For example, own-race faces appear to benefit
most from those factors that promote the use of contextual
information—a finding confirmed in two recent studies
(Evans, Marcon, & Meissner, in press; Horry & Wright,
2008). In contrast, participants’ criterion of responding is
unlikely to fully account for the CRE, since manipulations
that influence response bias are typically associated with
differences in reported familiarity (see Yonelinas, 2002).
In the present study, it is likely that the CRE observed in
a measure of response criterion was associated with the
greater (though nonsignificant) familiarity estimates ob-
served in the recognition of other-race faces.
From a practical perspective, a recollection-based inter-
pretation of the CRE would suggest a difficulty in mod-
erating the effect at the time of a lineup identification.
For example, some studies have suggested that sequential
presentation of faces may lead witnesses to provide more
conservative responses (Meissner, Tredoux, Parker, &
MacLin, 2005). Although such a manipulation may mod-
erate participants’ liberal responding to other-race faces,
it is unlikely to lead to better discrimination (or promote
greater recollection). As noted above, attempts at provid-
ing context reinstatement support similarly fail to improve
performance on other-race faces (Evans et al., in press).
Future research assessing predictions regarding the role of
recollection in the CRE would appear warranted.
AUTHOR NOTE
This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant
SES-0611636 to the third author. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions
Recollection- versus familiarity-based processing
.
Table 3 presents the means and standard deviations as-
sociated with the proportion of yes responses to repeated
faces in the inclusion (INC) and exclusion (EXC) condi-
tions, as well as estimates of recollection and familiarity
across own- and other-race faces. Consistent with Jen-
nings and Jacoby (1997), recollection was computed as
R INC EXC, whereas familiarity was computed as
F EXC/(1 R).2 No significant differences were ob-
served in the inclusion condition [t(21) 1.23, p .23,
d .24]; however, consistent with Experiment 1, partici-
pants were more likely to commit a repetition error on ex-
clusion trials when viewing other-race faces [t(21) 4.13,
p .001, d .78]. Consistent with Meissner, Brigham,
and Butz (2005), own-race faces showed significantly
greater recollection when compared with other-race faces
[t(21) 4.21, p .001, d .83], whereas no significant
difference in familiarity estimates was observed [t(21)
1.78, p .09, d .38].3
GENERAL DISCUSSION
The purpose of the present study was to examine the CRE
using Jennings and Jacoby’s (1997) process- dissociation
framework and to assess whether other-race faces were
more prone to repetition errors, whereas own-race faces
might benefit from recollection-based processing. Prior
research using the remember–know–guess paradigm sug-
gested that memory for own-race faces involved greater
reliance upon recollection (Meissner, Brigham, & Butz,
2005); however, the use of phenomenological judgments
has been criticized (Dunn, 2004). In the present study, we
sought to replicate this finding using a process- dissociation
paradigm that did not require such judgments.
In Experiment 1, the results showed the typical CRE
findings of greater discrimination accuracy and a more
conservative response bias for own-race faces. Addition-
ally, the participants were more likely to falsely recognize
repeated other-race faces, thereby committing a repetition
error. In Experiment 2, we sought to determine the extent
to which recollection and/or familiarity contributed to
the superior recognition of own-race faces using process-
dissociation equations. As predicted, a greater reliance on
recollection when processing own-race faces appeared to
be responsible for the CRE.
In the present study, we employed only Hispanic
participants because of limitations in the participant
pool. Meissner, Brigham, and Butz (2005) previously
demonstrated similar effects of recollection using the
remember–know–guess paradigm with Caucasian and
African-American samples, whereas the present study
Tab le 3
Means and Standard Deviations of Inclusion, Exclusion, Recollection, and
Familiarity Estimates Across Own- and Other-Race Faces in Experiment 2
Inclusion Exclusion Recollection Familiarity
M SD M SD M SD M SD
Own-race faces .78 .15 .08 .09 .70 .20 .29 .28
Other-race faces .73 .13 .26 .22 .45 .24 .44 .26
CROSS -RACE EFFECT 103
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NOTES
1. Repetition errors increased in a linear fashion across lags of 2, 5,
and 7 [F(1,53) 4.42, p .05, h=; however, lag failed to interact
with the CRE [F(1,53) 0.34, n.s., h=.
2. The interested reader can obtain a complete description and deriva-
tion of these formulae from Jennings and Jacoby (1997, p. 356).
3. Repetition errors did not significantly differ as a function of lag
[F(1,19) 0.05, n.s., h= and lag failed to interact with the CRE
[F(1,19) 0.59, n.s., h=.
(Manuscript received May 15, 2008;
revision accepted for publication July 22, 2008.)
or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Founda-
tion. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to C. A.
Meissner, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at El Paso,
El Paso, TX 79968 (e-mail: cmeissner@utep.edu).
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own- and other-race faces: A dual-process approach. Applied Cogni-
tive Psychology, 19, 545-567.
... The effect was found when comparing Asian and Caucasian faces, while scarce evidence exists for differences between Black and Caucasian faces. The race effect on the old/new effect is in line with behavioral findings (Horry et al., 2010;Marcon et al., 2009;Meissner et al., 2005). Greater recollectionbased retrieval of own-as opposed to other-race faces fits both socio-cognitive and perceptual expertise accounts of the ORE. ...
... Overall, face race modulated the late frontal old/new effect in both Caucasian and Asian observers, so that other-race faces, but not own-race faces, elicited a latefrontal old/new effect. This effect is in line with behavioral evidence of less efficient recollection for other-race faces (Horry et al., 2010;Marcon et al., 2009;Meissner et al., 2005) and with the hypothesis that other-race faces would require and benefit more than own-race faces from post-retrieval monitoring (e.g., Cruse & Wilding, 2009). ...
Article
Face race influences the way we process faces, so that faces of a different ethnic group are processed for identity less efficiently than faces of one's ethnic group - a phenomenon known as the Other-Race Effect (ORE). Although widely replicated, the ORE is still poorly characterized in terms of its development and the underlying mechanisms. In the last two decades, the Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique has brought insight into the mechanisms underlying the ORE and has demonstrated potential to clarify its development. Here, we review the ERP evidence for a differential neural processing of own-race and other-race faces throughout the lifespan. In infants, race-related processing differences emerged at the N290 and P400 (structural encoding) stages. In children, race affected the P100 (early processing, attention) perceptual stage and was implicitly encoded at the N400 (semantic processing) stage. In adults, processing difficulties for other-race faces emerged at the N170 (structural encoding), P200 (configuration processing) and N250 (accessing individual representations) perceptual stages. Early in processing, race was implicitly encoded from other-race faces (N100, P200 attentional biases) and in-depth processing preferentially applied to own-race faces (N200 attentional bias). Encoding appeared less efficient (Dm effects) and retrieval less recollection-based (old/new effects) for other-race faces. Evidence admits the contribution of perceptual, attentional, and motivational processes to the development and functioning of the ORE, offering no conclusive support for perceptual or socio-cognitive accounts. Cross-racial and non-cross-racial studies provided convergent evidence. Future research would need to include less represented ethnic populations and the developmental population.
... Despite the prevalence of the ORB and the significant potential for miscarriages of justice, there remains considerable debate regarding a theoretical explanation. Causal mechanisms have been attributed to both cognitive and social processes at encoding, when the face is learned (e.g., see Hugenberg et al., 2010;Marcon et al., 2009;Meissner, Brigham, & Butz, 2005;Sporer, 2001). Yet, it is currently unknown how information at retrieval influences other-race face recognition. ...
... Few studies have examined retrieval, and the results are mixed (Bornstein et al., 2013;Evans et al., 2009;Young et al., 2010). Consistent with an encoding-based account, one study found that only own-race faces, not other-race faces, benefited from representing contextual information, such as a name, at retrieval during a lineup task (Evans et al., 2009); likely attributable to the qualitative encoding of context and other recollective information for own-race faces (Meissner, Brigham, & Butz, 2005;Marcon et al., 2009). Instructions informing witnesses about the challenges of the ORB for identification accuracy are only effective in ameliorating the bias when presented before encoding ; not at the time of identification (Bornstein et al., 2013). ...
Article
Eyewitness identifications play a key role in the justice system, but eyewitnesses can make errors, often with profound consequences. We used findings from basic science and innovative technologies to develop and test whether a novel interactive lineup procedure, wherein witnesses can rotate and dynamically view the lineup faces from different angles, improves witness discrimination accuracy compared with a widely used procedure in laboratories and police forces around the world-the static frontal-pose photo lineup. No novel procedure has previously been shown to improve witness discrimination accuracy. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 220) identified culprits from sequentially presented interactive lineups or static frontal-pose photo lineups. In Experiment 2, participants (N = 8,507) identified culprits from interactive lineups that were either presented sequentially, simultaneously wherein the faces could be moved independently, or simultaneously wherein the faces moved jointly into the same angle. Sequential interactive lineups enhanced witness discrimination accuracy compared with static photo lineups, and simultaneous interactive lineups enhanced witness discrimination accuracy compared with sequential interactive lineups. These finding were true both when participants viewed suspects who were of the same or different ethnicity/race as themselves. Our findings exemplify how basic science can be used to address the important applied policy issue on how best to conduct a police lineup and reduce eyewitness errors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... Across domains, stimulus familiarity has been found to impact processing efficiency (Posner and Keele, 1968;Lewellen et al., 1993) and categorization (e.g., Smith, 1967;Johnson and Mervis, 1997;Whittlesea and Leboe, 2000). In the case of faces, it has been suggested that familiar ingroup faces function as a perceptual default facilitating their processing and identification, while impeding the processing and identification of other-race faces (e.g., Goldstein and Chance, 1980;Rhodes et al., 1987;Macron et al., 2009). Hence we expected greater accuracy in judgments of familiar faces, with Indian Asian faces to be more likely classified as such by Indian raters than U.S. raters, whereas the opposite should hold for Caucasian faces. ...
Book
Full-text available
With increasing interconnectedness of the world, intensifying migration flows and the rise of the right-wing populism in many countries, the topic of intercultural relations has become more and more relevant. Cultural and linguistic diversity brings both opportunities and challenges by, on the one hand, enriching human communication and enhancing societies’ creative potential, and on the other hand, bringing rapid change, threatening the status quo and demanding adaptation to the new circumstances from all members of multilingual and multicultural societies.At the heart of these intercultural relations are stereotypes. Stereotyping is a cognitive mechanism that underlies all aspects of intercultural processes: the way we perceive members of other groups shapes our attitudes and behavior towards them. This position stereotypes at the beginning of a sequence of psychological processes: cognition (stereotypes); affect (attitudes); and actions (discrimination). The fundamental role that stereotypes play in attitude formation and discrimination makes them an important target for scientific inquiry.Stereotypes are complex in nature. They are affected by psychological, sociocultural, sociolinguistic and geopolitical processes, which makes the study of stereotypes relevant to researchers from various disciplinary backgrounds. A vast body of literature accumulated so far illuminates the processes of stereotype formation and activation, their content and functions, their antecedents and consequences. However, the studies of stereotypes are scattered across various research areas: social, (cross-)cultural and cognitive psychology, ethnic studies, sociology, intercultural communication and management, social neuroscience, and others. Researchers working within these areas often use different terminology and diverging theoretical and methodological approaches. The lack of integration and interdisciplinary debate hinders the development of this field of research.The current book aims to bring together researchers from different disciplinary, theoretical and methodological backgrounds to create a space for exchange and integration of ideas. We welcomed contributions on the role of stereotypes in intercultural relations, including on cultural-ecological variations in stereotyping, how ethnic stereotypes are formed and maintained, how they change and what role they play in intergroup relations, intercultural communication, and acculturation processes. We believe this collection will contribute to the convergence of these research streams and will set directions for the further development of these fields separately.
... Across domains, stimulus familiarity has been found to impact processing efficiency (Posner and Keele, 1968;Lewellen et al., 1993) and categorization (e.g., Smith, 1967;Johnson and Mervis, 1997;Whittlesea and Leboe, 2000). In the case of faces, it has been suggested that familiar ingroup faces function as a perceptual default facilitating their processing and identification, while impeding the processing and identification of other-race faces (e.g., Goldstein and Chance, 1980;Rhodes et al., 1987;Macron et al., 2009). Hence we expected greater accuracy in judgments of familiar faces, with Indian Asian faces to be more likely classified as such by Indian raters than U.S. raters, whereas the opposite should hold for Caucasian faces. ...
Article
Full-text available
This paper serves three specific goals. First, it reports the development of an Indian Asian face set, to serve as a free resource for psychological research. Second, it examines whether the use of pre-tested U.S.-specific norms for stimulus selection or weighting may introduce experimental confounds in studies involving non-U.S. face stimuli and/or non-U.S. participants. Specifically, it examines whether subjective impressions of the face stimuli are culturally dependent, and the extent to which these impressions reflect social stereotypes and ingroup favoritism. Third, the paper investigates whether differences in face familiarity impact accuracy in identifying face ethnicity. To this end, face images drawn from volunteers in India as well as a subset of Caucasian face images from the Chicago Face Database were presented to Indian and U.S. participants, and rated on a range of measures, such as perceived attractiveness, warmth, and social status. Results show significant differences in the overall valence of ratings of ingroup and outgroup faces. In addition, the impression ratings show minor differentiation along two basic stereotype dimensions, competence and trustworthiness, but not warmth. We also find participants to show significantly greater accuracy in correctly identifying the ethnicity of ingroup faces, relative to outgroup faces. This effect is found to be mediated by ingroup-outgroup differences in perceived group typicality of the target faces. Implications for research on intergroup relations in a cross-cultural context are discussed.
... Causal mechanisms have been attributed to both cognitive and social processes at encoding, when the face is learnt. The dual-process account, for example, holds that observers are more likely to encode qualitatively more information, create a more diagnostic representation, and subsequently retrieve specific episodic information that aids in accurate recognition for own-race than for other-race faces (Marcon, Susa, & Meissner, 2009;Meissner, Brigham, & Butz, 2005). The in-group/out-group model proposes that, whereas people attend to and encode configural properties of own-race faces, other-race faces are automatically categorized and processed on a relatively shallow level (MacLin & Malpass, 2001;Sporer, 2001). ...
Preprint
Eyewitness identifications play a key role in the justice system, but eyewitnesses make errors, often with profound consequences. Errors are more likely when the witness is of a different race to the suspect, due to a phenomenon called the Own Race Bias (ORB). ORB is characterized as an encoding-based deficit, but has been predominantly tested using static photographs of people facing the camera. We used findings from basic science and innovative technologies to develop and test whether a novel interactive lineup procedure, wherein witnesses can rotate and dynamically view the lineup faces from different angles, improves witness discrimination accuracy and attenuates the ORB, compared to the most widely used procedure in laboratories and police forces around the world—the static frontal-pose photo lineup. No novel procedure has previously been shown to improve witness discrimination accuracy. In Experiment 1, participants (N=220) identified own-race or other-race culprits from sequentially presented interactive lineups or static frontal-pose photo lineups. In Experiment 2, participants (N=8,507) identified own-race or other-race culprits from interactive lineups that were either presented sequentially, simultaneously wherein the faces could be moved independently, or simultaneously wherein the faces moved jointly into the same angle. Interactive lineups enhanced witnesses’ discriminability compared to static lineups, especially when they were presented simultaneously, for both own-race and other-race identifications. Our findings suggest that ORB is an encoding-based phenomenon, and exemplify how basic science can be used to address the important applied policy issue on how best to conduct a police lineup and reduce eyewitness errors.
Article
Full-text available
People more accurately remember faces of their own racial group compared to faces of other racial groups; this phenomenon is called the other-race effect. To date, numerous researchers have devoted themselves to exploring the reasons for this other-race effect, and they have posited several theoretical explanations. One integrated explanation is the categorization-individuation model, which addresses two primary ways (categorization and individuation) of racial face processing and emphasizes the emergence of these two ways during the encoding stage. Learning-recognition and racial categorization tasks are two classical tasks used to explore racial face processing. Event-related potentials can facilitate investigation of the encoding differences of own- and other-race faces under these two typical task demands. Unfortunately, to date, results have been mixed. In the current study, we investigated whether categorization and individuation differ for own- and other-race faces during the encoding stage by using racial categorization and learning-recognition tasks. We found that task demands not only influence the encoding of racial faces, but also have a more profound effect in the encoding stage of recognition tasks for other-race faces. More specifically, own-race faces demonstrate deeper structural encoding than other-race faces, with less attentional involvement. Moreover, recognitions tasks might ask for more individual-level encoding, requiring more attentional resources in the early stage that may be maintained until relatively late stages. Our results provide some evidence concerning task selection for future racial face studies and establish a groundwork for a unified interpretation of racial face encoding.
Article
Individuals who are Hispanic or Latino make up a substantial portion of the U.S. and world population yet are vastly underrepresented as both participants and stimuli in the face-perception literature. Perceiving and recognizing faces are critical components of everyday social interactions, but cross-category effects (difficulty recognizing faces from other races or ethnicities) can hinder social interactions. Cross-category effects are the most commonly studied face-perception topic with these ethnic groups, but this empirical knowledge should be expanded via culturally relevant considerations. In this article, I describe (a) errors individuals display when categorizing target faces, (b) how social status influences identity and cross-category effects, (c) the potential impact of flexible and heterogeneous social identities on face processing, (d) a critical need for more developmental research, and (e) methodological expansions and generalizability concerns. Thus, I propose important directions for future studies to address these issues and advance knowledge in the field.
Article
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The current research conducted a three-level meta-analysis with a total of 159 journal articles on the other-race bias in facial identification, which had been published between 1969 and 2021. The effect size analysis yielded moderate pooled effect sizes of the other-race bias on face identification—people showed higher hit rates and discriminability, lower false alarm rates, and more stringent criteria for own-race faces than for other-race faces. Results from the sensitivity analysis and publication bias analysis also supported the robustness of the other-race bias. In moderation analyses, participant race (White vs. non-White) and retention interval between the study and test phases produced stable moderating effects on estimates of the other-race bias. Despite an increase in racial diversity for decades in our society, the current meta-analysis still demonstrated robust effects of the other-race bias in facial identification, replicating findings from the previous meta-analyses.
Article
The human face is arguably the most important of all social stimuli because it provides so much valuable information about others. Therefore, one critical factor for successful social communication is the ability to process faces. In general, a wide body of social cognitive research has demonstrated that perceivers are better at extracting information from their own‐race compared to other‐race faces and that these differences can be a barrier to positive cross‐race relationships. The primary objective of the present paper was to provide an overview of how people process faces in diverse contexts, focusing on racial ingroup and outgroup members within one nation and across nations. To achieve this goal, we first broadly describe social cognitive research on categorization processes related to ingroups vs. outgroups. Next, we briefly examine two prominent mechanisms (experience and motivation) that have been used to explain differences in recognizing facial identities and identifying emotions when processing ingroup and outgroup racial faces within nations. Then, we explore research in this domain across nations and cultural explanations, such as norms and practices, that supplement the two proposed mechanisms. Finally, we propose future cross‐cultural research that has the potential to help us better understand the role of these key mechanisms in processing ingroup and outgroup faces.
Article
Converging lines of research suggests that many developmental prosopagnosics (DPs) have impairments beyond face perception, but currently no framework exists to characterize these impaired mechanisms. One potential extra-perceptual deficit is that DPs encode/retrieve faces in a distinct manner from controls that does not sufficiently support individuation. To test this possibility, 30 DPs and 30 matched controls performed an old/new face recognition task while providing confidence ratings, to which a model-based ROC analysis was applied. DPs had significantly reduced recollection compared to controls, driven by fewer ‘high-confidence target’ responses, but intact familiarity. Recollection and face perception ability uniquely predicted objective and subjective prosopagnosia symptoms, together explaining 51% and 56% of the variance, respectively. These results suggest that a specific deficit in face recollection in DP may represent a core aspect of the difficulty in confidently identifying an individual by their face.
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One of the most familiar empirical phenomena associated with face recognition is the cross-race (CR) recognition deficit whereby people have difficulty recognizing members of a race different from their own. Most researchers assume that the CR deficit is caused by failure to generalize perceptual encoding expertise from same-race (SR) faces to CR faces. However, this explanation ignores critical differences in the social cognitions and feature coding priorities associated with SR and CR faces. On the basis of data from visual search and perceptual discrimination tasks, it appears that the deficit occurs because people emphasize visual information specifying race at the expense of individuating information when recognizing CR faces. In particular, it is possible to observe a paradoxical improvement in both detection and perceptual discrimination accuracy for CR faces that is limited to those who recognize them poorly. These findings support a new explanation for the CR recognition deficit based on feature coding differences between CR and SR faces, and appear incompatible with similarity-based models of face categories.
Article
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The current article reviews the own-race bias (ORB) phenomenon in memory for human faces, the finding that own-race faces are better remembered when compared with memory for faces of another, less familiar race. Data were analyzed from 39 research articles, involving 91 independent samples and nearly 5,000 participants. Measures of hit and false alarm rates, and aggregate measures of discrimination accuracy and response criterion were examined, including an analysis of 8 study moderators. Several theoretical relationships were also assessed (i.e., the influence of racial attitudes and interracial contact). Overall, results indicated a "mirror effect" pattern in which own-race faces yielded a higher proportion of hits and a lower proportion of false alarms compared with other-race faces. Consistent with this effect, a significant ORB was also found in aggregate measures of discrimination accuracy and response criterion. The influence of perceptual learning and differentiation processes in the ORB are discussed, in addition to the practical implications of this phenomenon.
Article
Full-text available
The majority of research on the cross-race effect has been conducted with standard facial recognition paradigms. A critical analysis of this paradigm is followed by a review of the few more ecologically valid studies of eyewitness identifications in field settings. The prevailing focus on eyewitness identification can be expanded by the consideration of ethnic differences at all stages of criminal investigations, from police interrogations to courtroom evaluation of testimony. The author analyzes ethnic differences in face and person descriptions and face recall systems, which not only have important implications for the construction of fair lineups but should be studied in their own right. Finally, attention is drawn to the literature on cross-ethnic differences in nonverbal and verbal behavior that may play a role in detecting deception in different forensic settings.
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Accusations of discriminatory treatment of minority persons in the criminal justice system create a need for policy and procedure development to create real and perceived equal treatment. A facial recognition deficit among law enforcement officers and witnesses for persons of another "race" contributes to unequal treatment of minority group members. This article demonstrates the other-race effect in an unusual context, reveals theoretical weaknesses, reveals the role of categorical processes in the phenomenon, and discusses policy implications. Experiment 1, based on feature and trait ratings, demonstrates that identical and racially ambiguous faces with different racial markers (hair) are perceived according to the marker. Experiment 2 demonstrates an other-race recognition effect using these faces. A feature acting as a racial marker can cause a face to be perceived and remembered differently. Other-race faces are perceived categorically, which drives the recognition process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
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The current research examined the potential benefit of context reinstatement on the cross-race effect in lineup identification. Participants viewed a series of own- and other-race faces and subsequently attempted identification of these faces from target-present and target-absent lineups. The traditional cross-race effect was found on measures of discrimination accuracy and response bias; however, discrimination accuracy across own- and other-race faces was shown to interact with context reinstatement such that only own-race faces benefited from the provision of contextual information. This finding is discussed in light of encoding-based theories of the cross-race effect, and with regard to the theoretical and practical limitations of mitigating the phenomenon at the time of identification.
Article
A formal dual-process model that assumes that memory judgments can be based on a threshold recollection process and a signal-detection based familiarity process is proposed to account for both recognition and source-memory performance. The model was tested in 4 experiments by examining recognition and source-memory receiver operating characteristics (ROCs). In agreement with the predictions of the model, recognition and source memory dissociated in certain conditions. Recognition ROCs were curvilinear in probability space and relatively linear in z-space, as expected if recollection and familiarity contributed to performance. In contrast, source ROCs typically were linear and exhibited a pronounced U shape in z-space, as expected if performance primarily relied on recollection. However, in conditions in which familiarity was clearly indicative of an item's source, the source ROC became curvilinear, suggesting that participants could use familiarity as a basis for source judgments. Several alternative models, including the unequal-variance signal-detection model, were found to be inconsistent with the ROC data.
Article
Evidence is presented that recognition judgments are based on an assessment of familiarity, as is described by signal detection theory, but that a separate recollection process also contributes to performance. In 3 receiver-operating characteristics (ROC) experiments, the process dissociation procedure was used to examine the contribution of these processes to recognition memory. In Experiments 1 and 2, reducing the length of the study list increased the intercept (d') but decreased the slope of the ROC and increased the probability of recollection but left familiarity relatively unaffected. In Experiment 3, increasing study time increased the intercept but left the slope of the ROC unaffected and increased both recollection and familiarity. In all 3 experiments, judgments based on familiarity produced a symmetrical ROC (slope = 1), but recollection introduced a skew such that the slope of the ROC decreased.
Article
Although previous studies have demonstrated that faces of one's own race are recognized more accurately than are faces of other races, the theoretical basis of this effect is not clearly understood at present. The experiment reported in this paper tested the contact hypothesis of the own-race bias in face recognition using a cross-cultural design. Four groups of subjects were tested for their recognition of distinctive and typical own-race and other-race faces: (1) black Africans who had a high degree of contact with white faces, (2) black Africans who had little or no contact with white faces, (3) white Africans who had a high degree of contact with black faces, and (4) white Britons who had little contact with black faces. The results showed that although on the whole subjects recognized own-race faces more accurately and more confidently than they recognized other-race faces, the own-race bias in face recognition was significantly smaller among the high-contact subjects than it was among the low-contact subjects. Also, although high-contact black and white subjects showed significant main effects of distinctiveness in their recognition of faces of both races, low-contact black and white subjects showed significant main effects of distinctiveness only in their recognition of own-race faces. It is argued that these results support the contact hypothesis of the own-race bias in face recognition and Valentine's multidimensional space (MDS) framework of face encoding.This study was funded by a grant awarded to the first author by the Ford Foundation through the University of Zimbabwe. Grant No. 880/051.