Perceptual Other-Race Training Reduces Implicit Racial Bias

Abstract

BackgroundImplicit racial bias denotes socio-cognitive attitudes towards other-race groups that are exempt from conscious awareness. In parallel, other-race faces are more difficult to differentiate relative to own-race faces – the “Other-Race Effect.” To examine the relationship between these two biases, we trained Caucasian subjects to better individuate other-race faces and measured implicit racial bias for those faces both before and after training.Methodology/Principal FindingsTwo groups of Caucasian subjects were exposed equally to the same African American faces in a training protocol run over 5 sessions. In the individuation condition, subjects learned to discriminate between African American faces. In the categorization condition, subjects learned to categorize faces as African American or not. For both conditions, both pre- and post-training we measured the Other-Race Effect using old-new recognition and implicit racial biases using a novel implicit social measure – the “Affective Lexical Priming Score” (ALPS). Subjects in the individuation condition, but not in the categorization condition, showed improved discrimination of African American faces with training. Concomitantly, subjects in the individuation condition, but not the categorization condition, showed a reduction in their ALPS. Critically, for the individuation condition only, the degree to which an individual subject's ALPS decreased was significantly correlated with the degree of improvement that subject showed in their ability to differentiate African American faces.Conclusions/SignificanceOur results establish a causal link between the Other-Race Effect and implicit racial bias. We demonstrate that training that ameliorates the perceptual Other-Race Effect also reduces socio-cognitive implicit racial bias. These findings suggest that implicit racial biases are multifaceted, and include malleable perceptual skills that can be modified with relatively little training.

Physicians and Implicit Bias: How Doctors May Unwittingly Perpetuate Health Care Disparities

“…Those trained to differentiate Black faces were more accurate than untrained participants, and their accuracy correlated with reduced implicit race bias. 58 Chapman et al's study of gender disparities in COPD diagnoses supports the benefit of individuation in reducing the influence of implicit bias in medical practice. In the study, the initial gender differences in diagnosis were eliminated when physicians were provided with spirometry data consistent with COPD.…”

The early development of face processing — What makes faces special?

“…Individual-level recognition Faster face identification on the individual level than on the Perceptual narrowing for recognizing human faces between superordinate or basic level [9] 6 and 9 months of age [41] , and for recognizing faces of one's own ethnicity between 3 and 9 months of age [43] Increase of discrimination ability for faces of other ethnicities Preservation of discrimination ability for monkey faces through individuation training [46,47] through individuation training [18] Experience in distinguishing Looking preference for the mother's face in newborns [2,3] individuals Recognition of individual faces in 1-month-old infants after short familiarization [49] Holistic processing Inversion effect. Reduced accuracy and increase in reaction Discrimination of thatcherized faces when stimuli are time for the recognition of inverted compared to upright presented upright but not inverted in newborns [53] faces [19][20][21] Part-whole effect.…”

“…Similarly, training adults in individuating faces of another race diminishes the other-race effect whereas training in categorizing faces as, for instance, African American does not [46,47] . This suggests that the representation of exemplars of a particular category as individuals is critical for maintaining the ability to discriminate individual faces beyond the first few months of infancy.…”

“…The representation of faces as individuals seems to be crucial for maintaining (and regaining) the ability to discriminate between faces of a certain race and species beyond 6 months of age [18,46,47] .…”

Cultural neuroscience and the category of race: the case of the other-race effect

“…In this way, perceptual and social factors may create and maintain the other-race effect through a cycle wherein perceptual homogenization encourages social homogenization. Indeed, perceptual training in ORE face recognition was recently found to reduce implicit social stereotyping to a degree that correlated across-subjects with levels of reduction in the other-race effect (Lebrecht et al 2009). Thus, differences in face recognition that appear to be a direct result of perceptual expertise may partially or entirely reflect the downstream effects of social-cognitive processes.…”