In 4 studies, the authors examined the impact of categorization on the recollection of ethnically ambiguous faces. Participants were presented with faces lying at various locations on mixed-race continua (i.e., Caucasian-North African and Caucasian-Asian faces were used as source images in a morphing program). In all studies, the prevalence of exclusive ethnic features in a face distorted participants' recollections of the face toward faces more typical of the category. Specifically, the recollection of 30% North African (or 30% Asian) faces shifted toward Caucasian source faces, whereas the recollection of 70% North African (or 70% Asian) faces shifted toward North African (Asian) source faces. Memory distortions did not emerge for extremely ambiguous (50%) faces and proved larger on mixed-race than same-race continua (Studies 3 and 4). Memory distortions also emerged with high levels of confidence. The authors elaborate on the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.Have you ever noticed, after meeting a person you have not seen for a period of time, that this person looked different than you remembered? Last year, an Italian colleague of ours returned from a 2-week holiday back in his homeland. As he entered the lab and greeted us, we commented on our feeling that his hair and eyes were actually lighter than we remembered. The sun may have lightened his hair during his holidays, but what explanation could hold for his eyes? Was our recollection of his face simply inaccurate? We speculated that within only 2 weeks, our memory of our colleague's face had shifted toward a face holding more typical characteristics of his national group. This event nicely illustrates the effect investigated here. Indeed, we hypothesized that face memory would be distorted toward more typical face exemplars. Although this issue could be addressed in the context of various categories (e.g., age, gender), we focused on ethnic categories in the present research. We hypothesized that the spontaneous categorization of ethnically ambiguous faces would result in memory distortions of these faces toward more typical face exemplars. The influence of social information externally attached to the faces was also considered.
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