Recognition Memory for Stereotypic Faces

Abstract

Denominational judgments about person stimuli have been found to have a particular salience in Northern Ireland (4, 6). As part of an investigation into intergroup attitudes in Northern Ireland (5) a set of stereotypic face stimuli were elicited which Protestant and Catholic subjects could agree upon in terms of their denomination. The present scudy examined recognition memory for these stereotypic faces vis i vis nonstereotyped faces. I t was predicted in line with exemplar models of social categories (2) that stereotypic faces would lead to better recognition rates than nonstereotypic faces. Subjects were 36 undergraduates with equal numbers of Protestants and Catholics, all of Northern Irish origin. They were presented 24 target faces made up of 8 stereotypic Catholic and 8 stereotypic Protestant faces plus 8 stereotypically neutral faces. The stimuli were presented to subjects on a Bell and Howell autofocus slide projector which allowed slide presentation time (3 sec.), verbal instructions, and interslide interval to be programmed in advance. Recognition memory for the stimuli was assessed after a 5-min. verbal distraction exercise using a forced-choice recognition task consisting of the 24 original faces plus 24 new distractor faces. Subjects' hit and false identification rates were combined to form a nonparametric decision theory statistic (3). Analysis indicated no differences by religion of subject but a significant main effect for type of face (F,,,, = 2.7, p < .05, one-tailed), indicating that stereotypic faces were recognized more frequently than distractors. The difficulties inherent in classifying faces as truly neutral on a range of categories that may elicit superior recognition (1) suggest that the present results be treated with caution. However, given the relatively small original selection of faces from which the stereotypic faces were derived (n = 117), work with larger samples may produce more salient stereotypes.