Spotting missing or wanted people: racial biases in prospective person memory

Abstract

Searching for missing or wanted people is a crucial task in our society. Previous work on prospective person memory (PPM) has demonstrated that performance on this type of search task is worse relative to standard prospective memory tasks. Importantly, this process may be further affected by the race of the missing person, yet this has never been tested in laboratory settings. To test the effects of race on PPM, a convenience sample consisting primarily of self-identified Caucasian participants was asked to search for either a Caucasian or an Indian target person while judging the orientation of different Caucasian and Indian faces. Although the tasks were otherwise identical, 89% of Caucasian PPM targets were found while only 53% of Indian targets were found. Furthermore, relative to a control group with no PPM requirements, participants were slower and more error-prone when judging Indian faces relative to White faces, particularly if they were searching for an Indian face. We interpret these results as revealing other-race effects in prospective person memory, highlighting race as a critical factor for finding missing people. Importantly, this also emphasizes the need for real-world search efforts to factor in difficulty differences when people monitor for missing/wanted people from their own or different racial backgrounds. For example, media coverage of missing persons cases could perhaps be distributed more equitably by considering whether the missing person is from a racial minority in that region.