Choosing Your Words and Pictures Wisely: When Do Individuation Instructions Reduce the Cross‐Race Effect?

Abstract

Recognition accuracy for faces of an individual's own race typically exceeds recognition accuracy for other-race faces. The categorization-individuation model (Hugenberg, Young, Bernstein, & Sacco, 2010) attributes this cross-race effect to motivation to encode distinctive features of own-race faces but category defining features for other-race faces. Two experiments using different stimuli tested hypotheses generated from this model with both Black and White participants. For White participants, instructions to individuate reduced the cross-race effect in both studies but did not eliminate it in Study 1. Black participants did not exhibit the cross-race effect in either study, but individuation instructions improved both their same-race and other-race sensitivity. The present quality of interracial contact moderated the relationship between instructions and other-race sensitivity for both Black and White participants in Study 1 but not in Study 2. Overall, results provide mixed support for this social categorization model.

Can we look past people’s race? The effect of combining race and a non-racial group affiliation on holistic processing

“…With even more similar faces, Sporer (1999) found an other-race effect for White German participants looking at German and Turkish faces but no other-race effect for Turkish participants. Finally, comparing Black and White faces, as in this study, Pica, Warren, Ross, and Kehn (2015) found an other-race effect for White American participants but no effect for Black participants in two studies. Most similar to this study, Wright, Boyd, and Tredoux (2003) found an other-race effect for White South African participants but not for Black South African participants, who instead showed an advantage for White faces.…”

“…Black South African participants tended to be more disadvantaged economically than the White Australian participants were, relative to the other-race within the study. This imbalance may have important social and perceptual consequences: as hypothesised by several authors, disadvantaged groups will likely have more motivation to recognise advantaged groups (White people in this case) than the other way around, since their livelihood may well be dependent on it (see Losin, Cross, Iacoboni, & Dapretto, 2014; Malpass, 1990; Pica et al, 2015). These factors are, however, all more relevant to race group membership than to university affiliation.…”

Recognising other-race faces is more effortful: The effect of individuation instructions on encoding-related ERP Dm effects

“…These findings suggest that people are in principle able to recognise own-and other-race faces similarly well, but per default do not process other-race faces in sufficient detail (Hugenberg et al, 2010). As a qualification to these initial findings, however, others have found these instruction effects to depend on expertise (Pica, Warren, Ross, & Kehn, 2015;Young & Hugenberg, 2012). In these studies, participants with higher amounts of other-race contact showed a stronger decrease in the ORB after receiving individuating instructions compared to people with more limited other-race contact.…”

Intentionally remembering or forgetting own‐ and other‐race faces: Evidence from directed forgetting

“…Interestingly, such effects of individuating instructions seem to depend on expertise. Accordingly, two recent studies (Pica, Warren, Ross, & Kehn, 2015; reported stronger reduction of the ORB following individuation instructions in participants with high levels of interracial contact. These results can be explained in terms of the CIM (Hugenberg et al, 2010) if one assumes that participants with more other-race contact are also more motivated to individuate other-race faces (and therefore enhanced expertise can become effective).…”