Two Factors in Face Recognition: Whether You Know the Person’s Face and Whether You Share the Person’s Race

Abstract

One of the best-known phenomena in face recognition is the other-race effect, the observation that own-race faces are better remembered than other-race faces. However, previous studies have not put the magnitude of other-race effect in the context of other influences on face recognition. Here, we compared the effects of (a) a race manipulation (own-race/other-race face) and (b) a familiarity manipulation (familiar/unfamiliar face) in a 2 × 2 factorial design. We found that the familiarity effect was several times larger than the race effect in all performance measures. However, participants expected race to have a larger effect on others than it actually did. Face recognition accuracy depends much more on whether you know the person’s face than whether you share the same race.

Ingroup and outgroup differences in face detection

“…If ingroup members are systematically prioritized for detection in real‐world scenarios, then outgroup members might be overlooked, suggesting that intergroup social interactions may be disadvantaged from the outset. Although group effects in face perception are known to be small (Zhou et al, 2021), statistical effect size is not the same as social importance. We suggest that future work should consider the downstream consequences of early detection biases for intergroup relations.…”

“…For instance, our affiliations with different cultural groups, sports teams, or political parties can change how we perceive visual illusions (Henrich et al, 2010), football matches (Hastorf & Cantril, 1954), or inauguration crowd sizes (Schaffner & Luks, 2018). One well‐known example of intergroup perceptual bias is the other‐race effect (ORE; also called the own‐race bias or cross‐race effect), in which humans, from a variety of cultures, show improved recognition memory for faces from their own ethnic group, when compared with faces from other ethnic groups (see Meissner & Brigham, 2001; Zhou et al, 2021). While the specific mechanisms underlying the ORE are still debated (see Young et al, 2012), the visual categorisation of faces according to group membership (in this case by ethnicity) is thought to be a fundamental component (Bernstein et al, 2007; Hugenberg et al, 2010; MacLin & Malpass, 2001, 2003).…”

Face-evoked thoughts

“…Indeed, the idiosyncratic nature of face-evoked thoughts suggests that an individual differences approach will be especially fruitful. For example, the degree of focus on physical versus non-physical information may vary with the demographic background of the viewer or the seen face (Xie, Flake, & Hehman, 2019); and expectations about other people's focus may be subject to similar influences (Zhou, Burton, & Jenkins, 2021).…”

The Importance of Internal and External Features in Face Recognition

“…Thus, the other-race effect may have been attenuated due to the prolonged exposure to White faces after adoption as well as to the early exposure to East Asian faces before adoption. Moreover, evidence suggests that similar exposure in adulthood has little effect on the magnitude of the other-race effect (McKone et al, 2019;Zhou et al, 2019;Zhou et al, 2021).…”