The Own-Race Bias for Face Recognition in a Multiracial Society

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Hoo Keat Wong¹  Ian D. Stephen²  David R. T. Keeble¹ 

[1] School of Psychology, University of Nottingham Malaysia;Department of Psychology, Macquarie University;Perception in Action Research Centre, Macquarie University

关键词: other-race effect;    own-race bias;    multiracial;    face recognition;    cross-cultural;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00208

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

The own-race bias (ORB) is a reliable phenomenon across cultural and racial groups where unfamiliar faces from other races are usually remembered more poorly than own-race faces ( Meissner and Brigham, 2001 ). By adopting a yes–no recognition paradigm, we found that ORB was pronounced across race groups (Malaysian–Malay, Malaysian–Chinese, Malaysian–Indian, and Western–Caucasian) when faces were presented with only internal features (Experiment 1), implying that growing up in a profoundly multiracial society does not necessarily eliminate ORB. Using a procedure identical to Experiment 1, we observed a significantly greater increment in recognition performance for other-race faces than for own-race faces when the external features (e.g. facial contour and hairline) were presented along with the internal features (Experiment 2)—this abolished ORB. Contrary to assumptions based on the contact hypothesis, participants’ self-reported amount of interracial contact on a social contact questionnaire did not significantly predict the magnitude of ORB. Overall, our findings suggest that the level of exposure to other-race faces accounts for only a small part of ORB. In addition, the present results also support the notion that different neural mechanisms may be involved in processing own- and other-race faces, with internal features of own-race faces being processed more effectively, whereas external features dominate representations of other-race faces.

【 授权许可】

CC BY