Culture, group membership, and face recognition. Commentary: Will you remember me? Cultural differences in own-group face recognition biases

Abstract

Literature reports that same-race faces are better recognized than cross-race faces. This cross-race effect has been observed, inter alia, in European Americans (MacLin et al., 2004) as well as in Asian Americans and East Asians (Michel et al., 2006; Hayward et al., 2008). Although research showed that cross-race effects reflect a superiority in the processing of components and configurations of own-race faces (Hayward et al., 2008), empirical evidence showed that (arbitrary) social categorization similarly contributes to an ingroup bias in face recognition (MacLin and Malpass, 2001). This finding suggests that mere social categorization is sufficient to bias face recognition performance in favor of ingroup faces, reflecting a motivational preference to individuate ingroup members (Hugenberg et al., 2010). Following these findings, Ng et al. (2016) examined whether participants' cultural background moderates the effect of arbitrarily determined social group membership on the recognition performance for ingroup/outgroup targets displaying neutral facial expressions. According to their focal hypothesis, North Americans should preferentially define their ingroups on broader social categories, whereas East Asians should define their ingroups with a focus on preexisting relationships established through friendship and family (Brewer and Yuki, 2007). Therefore, Ng and colleagues expected that European Canadians, but not East Asians, would show an ingroup bias in face recognition when group membership is arbitrarily determined by a minimal group manipulation: A color-coding system indicated whether one's own personality fits the personality of a displayed person (Study 1) or whether one's preexisting university affiliation fits that of a displayed person (Study 2). Same colors indicated ingroup faces, different colors indicated outgroup faces. In both studies, European Canadians recognized previously observed ingroup faces better than outgroup faces. East Asian Canadians did not show this bias for arbitrarily determined ingroup faces. Hence, the authors concluded that culture moderates the effect of mere social categorization on face recognition. Overall, these studies provide a valuable extension of previous research by introducing a cross-cultural perspective. However, some crucial aspects should be considered in future research in this field.