Two Factors in Face Recognition: Whether You Know the Person's Face and Whether You Share the Person's Race.

Xingchen Zhou,A M Burton,Rob Jenkins

doi:10.1177/03010066211014016

Abstract

One of the best-known phenomena in face recognition is the other-race effect, the observation that own-race faces are better remembered than other-race faces. However, previous studies have not put the magnitude of other-race effect in the context of other influences on face recognition. Here, we compared the effects of (a) a race manipulation (own-race/other-race face) and (b) a familiarity manipulation (familiar/unfamiliar face) in a 2 × 2 factorial design. We found that the familiarity effect was several times larger than the race effect in all performance measures. However, participants expected race to have a larger effect on others than it actually did. Face recognition accuracy depends much more on whether you know the person’s face than whether you share the same race.

Highlights

One of the best-known phenomena in face recognition is the other-race effect, the observation that own-race faces are better remembered than other-race faces
What makes a face hard to recognise? There is a common understanding among scientists, policy makers, and the general public that other-race faces are harder to recognise than own-race faces—a phenomenon known as the other-race effect (ORE; Meissner & Brigham, 2001)
Cognition does not occur in a vacuum, and there are social considerations surrounding race that may not apply to familiarity (Roberts & Rizzo, 2020)

Summary

Introduction

One of the best-known phenomena in face recognition is the other-race effect, the observation that own-race faces are better remembered than other-race faces. Previous studies have not put the magnitude of other-race effect in the context of other influences on face recognition. Cognition does not occur in a vacuum, and there are social considerations surrounding race that may not apply to familiarity (Roberts & Rizzo, 2020) These considerations could raise the salience of experimental findings that are modulated by race, perhaps increasing the expectation that such effects will be cognitively large. Based on reports of each effect separately (e.g., Bruce, 1982; Burton et al, 1999; Sangrigoli et al, 2005; Tanaka et al, 2004), we expected that familiarity would be a stronger determinant of face recognition memory than race.

Methods

Results

Conclusion