Modulation of Facial Expression on Other-race Face Categorization

Abstract

When faces are categorized by their race, participants often respond faster and more accurately to other-race faces than to own-race faces, and this is known as other-race categorization advantage. It has been evident for enhanced recognition of other-race faces with positive or negative emotions, but it remains unclear whether categorization of other-race faces receive similar impact from emotions. This study was to examine how emotions modualtes the categorization of other-race faces. Experiment 1 asked young participants to categorize faces with neutral, positive or negative expressions by their race, and found both positive and negative expressions slowed down the categorization of other-race faces and weakened the other-race categorization advantage. Experiment 2 recruited elders to judge the race of faces, and found they categorized other-race faces more slower, and the other-race categorization advantage was weakened by negative expressions to a greater extent for elders than for youngers. These results provided further evidence for the hypothesis of the competition between individual identity process and categorization process, which was a common implication of several theories on other-race categorization advantage.