Effect of racial bias on composite construction

Abstract

Summary We investigated how prior bias about a face's racial characteristics can affect its encoding and resultant facial composite construction. In total, 61 participants (24 Europeans, 18 Indians living in India and 19 Indians living in Europe) saw a racially ambiguous unfamiliar face and were led to believe it was either European or Indian. They created a composite of this face, using EFIT6. Two groups of independent raters (one Indian, the other European) then assessed the apparent race of each composite. A different two groups (one Indian, one European) assessed each composite's degree of resemblance to the target face, to determine whether this was influenced by the constructors' initial categorisation of the target face as “own‐race” or “other‐race.” Composites appeared significantly more “Asian” or “European” according to the bias induced in their creators, but there was no evidence of any own‐race bias in the resemblance ratings for the composites.

The importance of detailed context reinstatement for the production of identifiable composite faces from memory

“…To simulate the usual situation for real eyewitnesses, participants were recruited on the basis of being unfamiliar both with the testing environment (a student café) and with the target faces. Participants' race was not recorded as there is no evidence for an own-race bias in composite construction involving Caucasian faces (Bhardwaj & Hole, 2020;McQuiston-Surrett & Topp, 2008).…”