Perception of visual homogeneity as a precursor to the generalization of threat across racial outgroup individuals

Abstract

People who look different from oneself are often categorized as homogeneous members of another racial group. We examined whether the relationship between such categorization and the tendency to generalize over outgroup individuals is explained by perceived visual similarity, leading to an all-look-alike misperception. To address this question, White participants perceived sequences of White and Black faces while event-related electrocortical activity was recorded. Prior to each face sequence, one specific ingroup or outgroup face was instructed as a cue for receiving unpleasant electric shocks. The faces were presented in adaptor-target pairs, consisting of two ingroup faces or two outgroup faces, which could either depict the same or different identities. Results show less discrimination of outgroup compared to ingroup faces in early visual processing, i.e., N170 repetition suppression was sensitive only to ingroup face identities. Temporally following stimulus (mis)identification, threat generalized stronger over outgroup compared to ingroup faces, as indicated by Late Positive Potentials (LPP) for both threat and safety faces. These findings suggest that the misperception of outgroup homogeneity may be an early precursor to the tendency to generalize threat associations across outgroup individuals. The proposed link emphasizes the importance of visual minority representation to enhance perceptual learning with outgroup faces.