Other-race effects manifest in overall performance, not qualitative processing style

Abstract

Other-race effects in recognition memory of faces have been well documented: It is often more difficult to recognize other-race (OR) versus same-race (SR) faces (Meissner & Brigham, 2001). However, the mechanisms underlying such effects remain unknown. Recent work has shown that OR and SR faces are processed in the same qualitative manner—both SR and OR faces are processed holistically (Bukach, Cottle, Ubiwa, & Miller, 2012). Here, we manipulate stimulus presentation times to test whether there are quantitative processing differences between OR and SR faces. We found that Caucasian and Asian participants processed both OR and SR faces holistically, but there were differences in overall discrimination ability (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, we observed a similar discrimination advantage for SR faces categorized as belonging to an ingroup versus outgroup (see Hugenberg & Corneille, 2009) but no differences in holistic processing. Together, our results suggest that OR and SR faces differ in the efficiency with which they are encoded and processed, possibly as a consequence of social categorization that discourages individuation of outgroup (and OR) faces.