Out-group Faces Research Articles

Species-specific effects of pigmentation negation on the neural response to faces

Face processing is limited in scope as a function of experience – discrimination ability and face-specific behavioral effects are reduced in out-group faces. Nonetheless, other-species faces phylogenetically close to our own may be processed by similar mechanisms as human faces. Presently, we asked whether or not the well-known effect of contrast-negation on face recognition (Galper, 1970) was exclusive to human faces or generalized to monkey faces. Negation disrupts face pigmentation substantially, allowing us to examine species-specific use of surface cues as a function of expertise. We tested adult observers behaviorally and electrophysiologically: participants completed a 4AFC discrimination task subject to manipulations of face species and independent negation of image luminance and image chroma, and the same stimuli were used to collect event-related potentials in a go/no-go task. We predicted that expertise for human faces would lead to larger deleterious effects of negation for human faces in both tasks, reflected in longer RTs for correct responses in the discrimination task and species-specific modulation of the N170 and P200 by contrast-negation. Our results however, indicate that behaviorally, luminance and chroma negation affect discrimination performance in a species-independent manner, while similar effects of contrast-negation effects are evident in each species at different components of the ERP response.

Putting a face in its place: in- and out-group membership alters the N170 response

Two mechanisms have been proposed to account for the difficulty in recognizing faces of other racial groups (the other-race effect; ORE): perceptual expertise and social cognitive factors. Focusing on the social cognitive factors alone, we manipulated in-group and out-group memberships based on two social categories (nationality and university affiliation), and controlled for perceptual expertise by testing Caucasian participants with Caucasian faces only. Using event-related potentials (ERPs) and focusing on the N170, a brain electrical component sensitive to faces, we provide for the first time strong support for the social cognitive influence on face processing within 200 ms. After participants learned the social categories, the N170 latency differentiated between double in-group and double out-group faces, taking longer to process the latter. In comparison, without group memberships, there was no difference in N170 latency among the faces. These results are consistent with recent findings of behavioral and imaging research, providing further support for the social cognitive model and its potential for understanding ORE.

Embodying an outgroup: the role of racial bias and the effect of multisensory processing in somatosensory remapping

We come to understand other people's physical and mental states by re-mapping their bodily states onto our sensorimotor system. This process, also called somatosensory resonance, is an essential ability for social cognition and is stronger when observing ingroup than outgroup members. Here we investigated, first, whether implicit racial bias constrains somatosensory resonance, and second, whether increasing the ingroup/outgroup perceived physical similarity results in an increase in the somatosensory resonance for outgroup members. We used the Visual Remapping of Touch effect as an index of individuals' ability in resonating with the others, and the Implicit Association Test to measure racial bias. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to detect near-threshold tactile stimuli delivered to their own face while viewing either an ingroup or an outgroup face receiving a similar stimulation. Our results showed that individuals' tactile accuracy when viewing an outgroup face being touched was negatively correlated to their implicit racial bias. In Experiment 2, participants received the interpersonal multisensory stimulation (IMS) while observing an outgroup member. IMS has been found to increase the perceived physical similarity between the observer's and the observed body. We tested whether such increase in ingroup/outgroup perceived physical similarity increased the remapping ability for outgroup members. We found that after sharing IMS experience with an outgroup member, tactile accuracy when viewing touch on outgroup faces increased. Interestingly, participants with stronger implicit bias against the outgroup showed larger positive change in the remapping. We conclude that shared multisensory experiences might represent one key way to improve our ability to resonate with others by overcoming the boundaries between ingroup and outgroup categories.

The neural correlates of in-group and self-face perception: is there overlap for high identifiers?

Social identity, the part of the self-concept derived from group membership, is a key explanatory construct for a wide variety of behaviors, ranging from organizational commitment to discrimination toward out-groups. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined the neural basis of social identity through a comparison with the neural correlates of self-face perception. Participants viewed a series of pictures, one at a time, of themselves, a familiar other, in-group members, and out-group members. We created a contrast for self-face perception by subtracting brain activation in response to the familiar other from brain activation in response to the self face, and a contrast for social identity by subtracting brain activation in response to out-group faces from brain activation in response to in-group faces. In line with previous research, for the self—familiar other contrast we found activation in several right-hemisphere regions (inferior frontal gyrus, inferior and superior parietal lobules). In addition, we found activation in closely-adjacent brain areas for the social identity contrast. Importantly, significant clusters of activation in this in-group—out-group contrast only emerged to the extent that participants reported high identification with the in-group. These results suggest that self-perception and social identity depend on partly similar neural processes.

Behavioral information biases the expected facial appearance of members of novel groups

AbstractThe present study tests the hypothesis that behavioral information diagnostic of an out‐group's traits biases the expected facial appearance of out‐group members toward having facial features corresponding with the inferred traits. Participants formed a stereotype about a novel group based on random exemplar faces, presented alongside descriptions of their behavior. The behavioral information was manipulated to reflect either trustworthy or criminal traits, whereas the stimulus faces did not reflect any traits. Afterwards, participants' expected facial appearance of group members was assessed using a reverse correlation task. Independent judges rated the resulting visualized expectations as more criminal in the criminal behavioral information condition than in the trustworthy behavioral information condition. The current work establishes a causal link between behavioral information and expected out‐group faces where previously only correlations had been observed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Seeing “us vs. them”: Minimal group effects on the neural encoding of faces

Faces are inherently social, but the extent to which social group information affects early face processing remains unknown. To address this issue, we examined cortical activity associated with structural encoding of novel ingroup vs. outgroup faces. Participants were assigned to one of two arbitrarily-defined groups using the minimal group procedure, and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants categorized faces of people identified as members of their novel ingroup vs. outgroup. Our analysis focused on the N170 component of the ERP, which peaks 170ms following face onset and reflects face structural encoding. Ingroup faces elicited larger N170 amplitudes than outgroup faces, suggesting that mere group information affects this initial stage of face perception. These findings show that social categories influence how we “see” faces, thus providing insight into the process through which categorizations may lead to biased intergroup perceptions.

Effects of emotional body language on rapid out-group judgments

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of emotional body language (EBL) on in‐ and out-group face processing. In Experiment 1, White participants viewed pictures of in‐group (White) and out-group (Black) faces positioned on bodies conveying either happy or angry emotions. Experiment 2 employed the same paradigm, presenting Asian faces as the out‐group condition. In both experiments the task was to identify the race of the face as quickly as possible. For both experiments, there was a significant interaction between race of face and EBL, such that out‐group faces were processed faster with angry vs. happy EBL. Furthermore, a trend was observed such that in-group faces were processed faster with happy vs. angry EBL. When considered together, the effect appears to be due to an out-group, not a stereotyping, phenomenon. The results of both experiments provide support for the hypothesis that emotional body language may influence quick, unconscious, and automatic processing of faces of different races.

The flexibility of emotional attention: Accessible social identities guide rapid attentional orienting

There is extensive evidence that emotional—especially threatening—stimuli rapidly capture attention. These findings are often explained in terms of a hard-wired and relatively inflexible fear module. We propose an alternative, more flexible mechanism, arguing that motivational relevance is the crucial factor driving rapid attentional orienting. To test our hypothesis, we endowed initially neutral face stimuli with relevance by randomly assigning them to a social in-group or out-group during a 1-min learning phase, and used these faces as cues in a dot probe task to measure rapid attentional orienting. Across three experiments, we observed attentional orienting toward faces assigned to the out-group. Initial rapid orienting (after 100ms, Experiments 1 and 2) was observed only for familiar faces for which group membership was explicitly encoded, suggesting that rapid orienting may be based on affectively charged memory traces. At a later time point (after 500ms, Experiment 3), attention was deployed toward unfamiliar faces sharing a physical attribute (background color) with the familiar out-group faces, suggesting a more time-consuming on-line appraisal of the stimulus. The amount of attentional bias to out-group faces was correlated with individual differences in the accessibility of group identification. Our findings demonstrate that attentional prioritization mechanisms can be flexibly tuned by a brief learning phase of social identity. This is consistent with the idea that attention mechanisms subserving the selection and prioritization of emotional aspects of the environment are not static and hard-wired, but may rapidly adapt to recent changes in motivational contingencies.

Fear is readily associated with an out-group face in a minimal group context

Research on prepared learning demonstrates that fear-conditioning biases may exist to natural hazards (e.g., snakes) compared to nonnatural hazards (e.g., electrical cords) and that fear is more readily learned toward exemplars of a racial out-group than toward exemplars of one's own race. Here we push the limits of the generalizability of the mechanisms underlying race biases in a fear-conditioning paradigm by using arbitrary group categories not distinguished by race. Groups were distinguishable solely by t-shirt color, with assignment based on performance in a perceptual task. In this “minimal group paradigm,” we found that out-group exemplars were more readily associated with an aversive stimulus than exemplars of one's in-group. Our findings suggest that prepared learning in an intergroup context is not limited to contexts involving racial categories involving histories rife with cultural stereotypes and that previous findings of learning biases along racial lines may be interpreted as a by-product of a broader psychological system for prepared fear learning toward categories of agents that may have posed persistent threats over human evolutionary history.

Threat advantage: Perception of angry and happy dynamic faces across cultures

The current study tested whether the perception of angry faces is cross-culturally privileged over that of happy faces, by comparing perception of the offset of emotion in a dynamic flow of expressions. Thirty Chinese and 30 European-American participants saw movies that morphed an anger expression into a happy expression of the same stimulus person, or vice versa. Participants were asked to stop the movie at the point where they ceased seeing the initial emotion. As expected, participants cross-culturally continued to perceive anger longer than happiness. Moreover, anger was perceived longer in in-group than in out-group faces. The effects were driven by female rather than male targets. Results are discussed with reference to the important role of context in emotion perception.

Manipulation of Intergroup Relationships does not reduce Racial Bias in Empathetic Neural Responses

Event Abstract Back to Event Manipulation of Intergroup Relationships does not reduce Racial Bias in Empathetic Neural Responses Emily R. Hielscher1*, Luis S. Contreras1 and Ross Cunnington1 1 Queensland Brain Institute, Australia When we observe someone in pain, it activates neural structures that are involved in the direct experience of pain. Recent ERP studies (Sheng & Han, 2012) have investigated the racial bias of empathy in response to perceived pain amongst a Chinese population. Findings have demonstrated an automatic, empathetic neural response to observed pain experienced by same-race subjects. There is uncertainty as to whether this is due to racial effects or just a general in-group bias. The present study aimed to further elucidate this by investigating the time-course of empathetic neural responses when intergroup relationships were manipulated. Using the minimal group paradigm, a sample of Caucasian Australians were assigned to one of two mixed race (Asian, Caucasian) groups. Participants were asked to judge in-group and out-group faces as either painful or not; faces were exposed to a painful (syringe) or non-painful (q-tip) stimuli. The results identified a significant racial bias at early ERP components including N1, where painful stimuli elicited a negative shift relative to non-painful stimuli in response to Caucasian faces only. Additionally, strong racial effects were found at N170 and VPP. A long latency empathic response was found at P3 where there was significant differentiation between painful and non-painful stimuli, regardless of race or group. There was no evidence that empathy-related brain activity was modulated by intergroup manipulation. The results support a model of empathy for pain which consists of early, automatic identification for same race and a late top-down cognitive evaluation. The neuroscience of empathy is important for furthering our understanding of the ‘hidden brain’, that our unconscious mind may be more biased than we would like to believe. References Sheng, F., & Han, S. (2012). Manipulations of cognitive strategies and intergroup relationships reduce the racial bias in empathic neural responses. NeuroImage, 61, 786-797. Keywords: Empathy, ERP, Pain, Racial Bias, Intergroup Manipulation Conference: ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 29 Nov - 2 Dec, 2012. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Emotion and Social Citation: Hielscher ER, Contreras LS and Cunnington R (2012). Manipulation of Intergroup Relationships does not reduce Racial Bias in Empathetic Neural Responses. Conference Abstract: ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2012.208.00044 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 14 Oct 2012; Published Online: 07 Nov 2012. * Correspondence: Ms. Emily R Hielscher, Queensland Brain Institute, Brisbane, Australia, e.hielscher@qcmhr.uq.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Emily R Hielscher Luis S Contreras Ross Cunnington Google Emily R Hielscher Luis S Contreras Ross Cunnington Google Scholar Emily R Hielscher Luis S Contreras Ross Cunnington PubMed Emily R Hielscher Luis S Contreras Ross Cunnington Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

An own-age bias in age estimation of faces

IntroductionAge estimation performances may be influenced by group biases. ObjectiveThis study investigated whether we are more accurate at estimating the age of people from one's own-age than the age of younger or older people. MethodChildren, young and older adults’ performances at estimating both in-group and out-group faces were compared. ResultsA significant “Age of participants”דAge of face stimuli” interaction was revealed. Moreover, the age of children's faces was more accurately estimated than the age of young and older adults’ faces by the three groups of participants. ConclusionThe present results revealed the occurrence of an own-age bias for children, young and older adults in age estimation. Several explanations to this own-age effect are discussed.

Pictorial versus structural representations of ingroup and outgroup faces

Mental representations of unfamiliar faces may rely, to a greater or lesser extent, on pictorial cues that are closely linked to the specific image studied, and structural cues that allow for recognition across various transformations. Here, we test participants’ recognition of unfamiliar ingroup and outgroup faces, manipulating image transformation (pose) and exposure duration. The results showed that changes in pose reduced accuracy for outgroup faces but not for ingroup faces. Overall, accuracy increased as exposure duration increased. Accurate responses were made more rapidly than inaccurate responses for both ingroup and outgroup faces, showing that response latency is a useful postdictor of accuracy even for cross-ethnic identifications. The results are discussed in the framework of Bruce and Young's (1986) model of face recognition.

On the resistance to extinction of fear conditioned to angry faces

The present study investigated whether, like fear conditioned to pictures of snakes and spiders, fear conditioned to angry faces resists extinction even after verbal instruction and removal of the shock electrode. Participants were trained in a differential Pavlovian fear conditioning procedure with angry face or happy face conditional stimuli (CSs). Prior to extinction, half the participants in each group were informed that no more unconditional stimuli would be presented and the shock electrode was removed. In the absence of this manipulation, participants showed resistance to extinction after training with angry face CSs, but not after training with happy face CSs. Instructed extinction and electrode removal abolished fear conditioning regardless of the emotion expressed by the CS faces. This finding suggests that fear conditioned to angry faces, like fear conditioned to racial out-group faces, is more malleable than fear conditioned to snakes and spiders.

Modulation of the Fusiform Face Area following Minimal Exposure to Motivationally Relevant Faces: Evidence of In-group Enhancement (Not Out-group Disregard)

Studies have shown that fusiform face area (FFA) activity increases with visual expertise. We present an fMRI study showing that faces from a social category made relevant by an experimental manipulation (members of an experimentally created in-group) preferentially recruited the FFA even when they were matched in exposure to face stimuli from a less significant social category (members of an experimentally created out-group). Faces were randomly assigned to groups and fully counterbalanced so that no perceptual cues allowed participants to visually distinguish category membership. The results revealed a pattern of in-group enhancement (not out-group disregard), such that the FFA was selectively engaged following the presentation of in-group compared with out-group or unaffiliated control faces even when the intergroup distinction was arbitrary, and exposure to in-group and out-group faces was equivalent and brief. In addition, individual differences in FFA activity for in-group versus out-group faces were correlated with recognition memory differences for in-group and out-group faces. The effects of group membership on the FFA were not affected by task instruction to respond to in-group or out-group members and were functionally dissociated from early visual processing in the primary visual cortex. This study provides evidence that the FFA is sensitive to top-down influences and may be involved in subordinate level (vs. superordinate level) encoding of stimuli in the absence of long-term exposure or explicit task instructions.

Racial Group Membership Is Associated to Gaze-Mediated Orienting in Italy

Viewing a face with averted gaze results in a spatial shift of attention in the corresponding direction, a phenomenon defined as gaze-mediated orienting. In the present paper, we investigated whether this effect is influenced by social factors. Across three experiments, White and Black participants were presented with faces of White and Black individuals. A modified spatial cueing paradigm was used in which a peripheral target stimulus requiring a discrimination response was preceded by a noninformative gaze cue. Results showed that Black participants shifted attention to the averted gaze of both ingroup and outgroup faces, whereas White participants selectively shifted attention only in response to individuals of their same group. Interestingly, the modulatory effect of social factors was context-dependent and emerged only when group membership was situationally salient to participants. It was hypothesized that differences in the relative social status of the two groups might account for the observed asymmetry between White and Black participants. A final experiment ruled out an alternative explanation based on differences in perceptual familiarity with the face stimuli. Overall, these findings strengthen the idea that gaze-mediated orienting is a socially-connoted phenomenon.

Knowing You Beyond Race: The Importance of Individual Feature Encoding in the Other-Race Effect

Knowing You Beyond Race: The Importance of Individual Feature Encoding in the Other-Race Effect

Mere social categorization modulates identification of facial expressions of emotion.

The ability of the human face to communicate emotional states via facial expressions is well known, and past research has established the importance and universality of emotional facial expressions. However, recent evidence has revealed that facial expressions of emotion are most accurately recognized when the perceiver and expresser are from the same cultural ingroup. The current research builds on this literature and extends this work. Specifically, we find that mere social categorization, using a minimal-group paradigm, can create an ingroup emotion-identification advantage even when the culture of the target and perceiver is held constant. Follow-up experiments show that this effect is supported by differential motivation to process ingroup versus outgroup faces and that this motivational disparity leads to more configural processing of ingroup faces than of outgroup faces. Overall, the results point to distinct processing modes for ingroup and outgroup faces, resulting in differential identification accuracy for facial expressions of emotion.

When Memory is Better for Out-group Faces: On Negative Emotions and Gender Roles

Memory for in-group faces tends to be better than memory for out-group faces. Ackerman et al. (Psychological Science 17:836–840, 2006) found that this effect reverses when male faces display anger, supposedly due to their functional value in signaling intergroup threat. We explored the generalizability of this reverse effect. White participants viewed Black and White male or female faces displaying angry, fearful, or neutral expressions. Recognition accuracy for White male faces was better than for Black male faces when faces were neutral, but this reversed when the faces displayed anger or fear. For female targets, Black faces were generally better recognized than White faces, and female faces were better remembered when they displayed anger rather than fear, whereas male faces were better remembered when they displayed fear rather than anger. These findings are difficult to reconcile with a functional account and suggest (a) that the processing of male out-group faces is influenced by negative emotional expressions in general; and (b) that gender role expectations lead to differential remembering of male and female faces as a function of emotional expression.

Recognizing faces from ethnic in-groups and out-groups: Importance of outer face features and effects of retention interval

Summary: People recognize faces from their own ethnic group more accurately than faces from other ethnic groups. White German (WG) and Turkish participants living in Germany performed an old/new recognition test with faces from several ethnic groups. The presence or absence of external features (hair, face contour) and retention interval (immediate versus 3 weeks) were manipulated. Own-ethnicity effects (OEEs) were found, with recognition accuracy and response bias varying across the different stimulus sets. The 3-week retention interval reduced accuracy for in-group faces but not for out-group faces, while the removal of outer features was more harmful to out-group faces than to in-group faces. Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. One of the most well documented effects in the face recognition literature is the finding that participants tend to be more accurate at recognizing faces from their own ethnic group than faces from other ethnic groups. One of the first empirical demonstrations of this effect (which we will term the own-ethnicity effect, OEE) was by Malpass and Kravitz (1969), and since then, there have been dozens of replications. In a meta-analysis of 39 studies, Meissner and Brigham (2001) concluded that the OEE is both robust