Attention and Working Memory Biases to Black and Asian Faces During Intergroup Contexts.

Guadalupe D S Gonzalez,David M Schnyer

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02743

Abstract

Categorizing and individual as a racial ingroup or outgroup member results in processing and memory differences. However, despite processing differences for racial ingroups and outgroups, very little is known about processing of racial ingroup and outgroup members during intergroup contexts. Thus, the present research investigated attention and memory differences for racial ingroup and outgroup members during competition for attention (i.e., intergroup contexts). In experiment 1, event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained while participants completed a working memory task that presented 4 faces (2 Black, 2 White) at once then, following a short delay, were probed to indicate the spatial location of one of the faces. Participants showed better location memory for Black than White faces. During encoding, ERP results revealed differences based on the race of the face in P300 amplitudes, such that there was greater motivated processing when attending to Black faces. At probe, the N170 indicated enhanced early processing of Black faces and greater LPCs were associated with better recollection of Black face location. In a follow-up study using the same task, we examined attention and working memory biases for Asian and White faces in Caucasian and Asian participants. Results for both Caucasian and Asian participants indicated better working memory for Asian relative to White faces. Together, results indicate that during intergroup contexts, racial minority faces capture attention, resulting in better memory for those faces. The study underscores that examining racial biases with single stimuli paradigms obscures important aspects of attention and memory biases during intergroup contexts.

Highlights

Individuals tend to process racial ingroup and outgroup members differently and these differences have important implications for intergroup relations (Marcon et al, 2010; DeGutis et al, 2013; Hayward et al, 2013; Kawakami et al, 2014, 2018)
Racial Biases During Intergroup Contexts some research suggests that early attention biases to Black relative to White faces may reflect an early vigilance to Black individuals due to stereotypes associating Black people with danger or threat (Trawalter et al, 2008)
The effects could be attributed to skin color differences rather than race per se. This seems unlikely since the early event-related potentials (ERPs) components during encoding (i.e., N170 and N200) did not indicate differences in initial attention to Black and White faces

Summary

Introduction

Individuals tend to process racial ingroup and outgroup members differently and these differences have important implications for intergroup relations (Marcon et al, 2010; DeGutis et al, 2013; Hayward et al, 2013; Kawakami et al, 2014, 2018). Despite the important role of attention biases to racial ingroups and outgroups, little is known about how individuals deploy attention when multiple races are present. The current research sought to examine whether existing effects associated with own-race biases in attention and memory persist in contexts where faces from multiple races are simultaneously present. We hypothesized that Caucasian participants would have better memory for Asian than White faces whereas Asian participants would have better memory for White than Asian faces

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion