Who Is Memorable to Whom: A Study of Cognitive Disregard

Abstract

lies lor c ognitive disregard are those attributes of strangers that signify their lack of interest for us. Disregarded strangers are not noticed beyond category level; their invisibility is shown by our failure to recognize them as familiar in a subse quent one ounter. Five experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 established the operation ot disregard in a lab setting with the finding that subjects had better recall lor (photos of) persons with natural relevance to their lives than for other photos to which their attention had been especially directed. In Experiment 2, which compared the recall of undergraduate-aged and elderly subjects for persons of varying ages, it was found that age discrepancy acted as a disregard cue, although youthfulness per se enhanced memorability In Experiment 3, undergrad uate-aged and middle-aged male and female targets had brief interactions with subjects. The hypothesis that college students were more likely to disregard mid dle-aged strangers with whom they had a brief encounter than strangers of their own age was supported. Experiment 4, following up a methodological point, supported the disregard hypothesis with the finding that the attractiveness of fe male targets affected the recall ot male but not female sub|ects. In Experiment 5, middle-aged male and female targets had brief interactions with voung and mid dle-aged subjects; the hypothesis that they would be better remembered by the middle-aged sublets was supported.

An own-age bias in face recognition for children and older adults

“…In contrast, out-group faces are first categorized for out-group status, with the possibility that processing does not extend beyond initial categorization (cf. Rodin, 1987). If additional processing does occur, these processes give "attentional weight to distinguishing out-group from ingroup members .…”

Modeling the Role of Social-Cognitive Processes in the Recognition of Own- and Other-Race Faces

“…In the context of faces, racial categorization has been conceived as involving early perceptual judgments (as quickly as 120 msec; see Ito & Urland, 2003, 2005) of a person"s race or ethnicity, especially with respect to faces of the in-group vs. out-group (Levin, 1996;Smith & Zárate, 1992). Levin (1996Levin ( , 2000 has postulated that when individuals see faces of another race they quickly categorize the face based upon race (i.e., out-group), at the expense of encoding other individuating facial features (see also Rodin, 1987;. However, such racial categorization effects are not generally seen with own-race (i.e., in-group) faces.…”

The Role of Gender in Face Recognition

“…This own-group bias effect, sometimes labeled out-group homogeneity effect or cross-group deficit, is well documented. The own-bias effect has been found for such characteristics as age, attractiveness, race, and gender (e.g., Fulton & Bartlett, 1991;Lewin & Herlitz, 2002;Lindholm, 2005;Rodin, 1987;Shepherd & Deregowski, 1981;Wright & Sladden, 2003;Wright & Stroud, 2002). However, the explanations for the effects are still under debate.…”

“…The lack of interest in and attention to out-group members can work as a form of cognitive disregard (Rodin, 1987). Out-group members' faces may be less attended to and may also solely be attended to at a categorical level.…”