The effect of implicit racial bias on recognition of other-race faces

Abstract

Previous research has established a possible link between recognition performance, individuation experience, and implicit racial bias of other-race faces. However, it remains unclear how implicit racial bias might influence other-race face processing in observers with relatively extensive experience with the other race. Here we examined how recognition of other-race faces might be modulated by observers’ implicit racial bias, in addition to the effects of experience and face recognition ability. Caucasian participants in a culturally diverse city completed a memory task for Asian and Caucasian faces, an implicit association test, a questionnaire assessing experience with Asians and Caucasians, and a face recognition ability test. As expected, recognition performance for Asian faces was positively predicted by increased face recognition ability, and experience with Asians. More importantly, it was also negatively predicted by increased positive bias towards Asians, which was modulated by an interaction between face recognition ability and implicit bias, with the effect of implicit bias observed predominantly in observers with high face recognition ability. Moreover, the positions of the first two fixations when participants learned the other-race faces were affected by different factors, with the first fixation modulated by the effect of experience and the second fixation modulated by the interaction between implicit bias and face recognition ability. Taken together, these findings suggest the complexity in understanding the perceptual and socio-cognitive influences on the other-race effect, and that observers with high face recognition ability may more likely evaluate racial features involuntarily when recognizing other-race faces.

The role of implicit social bias on holistic processing of out-group faces

“…In contrast, positive social evaluation information, similar to the effect of positive emotions (Chen & Cheung, 2021;Curby et al, 2012;Xie & Zhang, 2016), may prompt observers who have little experience with the out-groups to further engage holistic processing when recognizing those faces. Importantly, note that experience and implicit social bias do not necessarily account for the same variance in the processing of out-group faces (Trawiński et al, 2021). In particular, we observed no significant correlations between experience with an out-group and implicit social bias toward the specific group in either experiment.…”

“…The current study has expanded a growing literature on the influence of implicit social bias on face recognition (Lebrecht et al, 2009;Walker & Hewstone, 2008;Trawiński et al, 2021) by demonstrating its effect on holistic processing of other-race and other-age faces. It is important to note, however, that even though holistic processing is critical for face recognition, other types of processing, such as featural processing of individual components on a face (e.g., when only the eyes are available), also contribute to successful face recognition.…”

“…Instead of highlighting group membership in previous studies on holistic processing, here we examined how implicit social biases might affect holistic processing of other-race faces (Experiment 1) and other-age faces (Experiment 2). Note that although the influence of implicit social biases on face recognition performance have been examined (Lebrecht et al, 2009;Trawiński et al, 2021;Walker & Hewstone, 2008), it remains unclear how it might influence holistic processing-a hallmark of processing of own-group faces. It is possible that positive implicit biases toward other race or age groups could enhance holistic processing of those out-group faces, because previous findings have shown that positive emotions lead to increased holistic face processing (Chen & Cheung, 2021;Curby et al, 2012;Xie & Zhang, 2016).…”

Detecting a familiar person behind the surgical mask: recognition without identification among masked versus sunglasses-covered faces

“…In the future, it will be important to collect demographic information from the participants as well as to diversify the pool of stimuli under examination so that patterns such as cross-race bias effects can be explored. For example, is the face RWI effect reported here affected by the cross-race bias (e.g., Trawiński et al, 2021)?…”

Gender and Ethnic Diversity in Academic Facial Plastic Surgery

“…Individuals have varying degrees of implicit racial bias based on their own experiences and exposures in the community, and research has shown that these biases can positively or negatively influence various assessments of own-race and other-race faces, including categorization and identification. [29][30][31] To minimize these potential effects in our study, race/ethnicity designations were cross-checked by at least two members of a diverse research team. Furthermore, this data collection method has been utilized in existing literature and was similarly employed in the present study.…”