Out-group Faces Research Articles

Minimal but not meaningless: Seemingly arbitrary category labels can imply more than group membership.

Minimal group paradigms tend to involve contrived group distinctions, such as dot estimation tendencies and aesthetic preferences. Researchers assume that these novel category distinctions lack informational value. Our research tests this notion. Specifically, we used the classic overestimator versus underestimator and Klee versus Kandinsky minimal group paradigms to assess how category labels influence minimal group responses. In Study 1, we show that participants represented ingroup faces more favorably than outgroup faces, but also represented overestimator and underestimator category labels differently. In fact, the category label effect was larger than the intergroup effect, even though participants were told that estimation tendencies were unrelated to other cognitive tendencies or personality traits. In Study 2, we demonstrate that Klee and Kandinsky were also represented differently, but in this case, the intergroup effect was stronger than the category label effect. In Studies 3 and 4, we examined effects of category labels on how participants allocate resources to, evaluate, and ascribe traits to ingroup and outgroup members. We found both category label and intergroup effects when participants were assigned to overestimator and underestimator groups. However, we found only the intergroup effect when participants were assigned to Klee and Kandinsky groups. Together, this work advances but does not upend understanding of minimal group effects. We robustly replicate minimal intergroup bias in mental representations of faces, evaluations, trait inferences, and resource allocations. At the same time, we show that seemingly arbitrary category labels can imply characteristics about groups that may influence responses in intergroup contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Do I Know You? The Role of Culture in Racial Essentialism and Facial Recognition Memory

We examine relations between racial essentialism—the belief that racial categories are natural and homogeneous due to shared underlying properties—and the Own-Race Bias (ORB)—the tendency to recognize racial ingroup faces better than racial outgroup faces. We assessed essentialist beliefs and Facial Recognition Memory (FRM) for Black, White, and Asian targets in White American (WA) and Asian/Asian American (A/AA) participants. Because essentialism leads to increased perception of group homogeneity, we predicted a positive association between ORB and racial outgroup essentialism. Group differences emerged on both measures: WA participants essentialized racial outgroups more than their ingroup and recognized White faces more accurately than Black or Asian faces, whereas A/AA participants essentialized their ingroup more than racial outgroups and did not demonstrate the ORB. The overall association between racial essentialism and ORB was not observed within groups; suggesting that cultural differences might underlie group differences in relations between FRM and essentialism.

The India Face Set: International and Cultural Boundaries Impact Face Impressions and Perceptions of Category Membership.

This paper serves three specific goals. First, it reports the development of an Indian Asian face set, to serve as a free resource for psychological research. Second, it examines whether the use of pre-tested U.S.-specific norms for stimulus selection or weighting may introduce experimental confounds in studies involving non-U.S. face stimuli and/or non-U.S. participants. Specifically, it examines whether subjective impressions of the face stimuli are culturally dependent, and the extent to which these impressions reflect social stereotypes and ingroup favoritism. Third, the paper investigates whether differences in face familiarity impact accuracy in identifying face ethnicity. To this end, face images drawn from volunteers in India as well as a subset of Caucasian face images from the Chicago Face Database were presented to Indian and U.S. participants, and rated on a range of measures, such as perceived attractiveness, warmth, and social status. Results show significant differences in the overall valence of ratings of ingroup and outgroup faces. In addition, the impression ratings show minor differentiation along two basic stereotype dimensions, competence and trustworthiness, but not warmth. We also find participants to show significantly greater accuracy in correctly identifying the ethnicity of ingroup faces, relative to outgroup faces. This effect is found to be mediated by ingroup-outgroup differences in perceived group typicality of the target faces. Implications for research on intergroup relations in a cross-cultural context are discussed.

An error in the analysis of “An eye for the I”.

Reports an error in "An eye for the I: Preferential attention to the eyes of ingroup members" by Kerry Kawakami, Amanda Williams, David Sidhu, Becky L. Choma, Rosa Rodriguez-Bailón, Elena Cañadas, Derek Chung and Kurt Hugenberg (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2014[Jul], Vol 107[1], 1-20). Kawakami and colleagues (Kawakami et al., 2014) conducted a series of studies in which participants saw pairs of faces (e.g., one Black and one White, or one ingroup and one outgroup) while eye tracking data were recorded. Because two faces were presented simultaneously, participants were allowed to choose how to allocate attention between the two faces. Often, they attended to one type of face more the other, creating a difference in base rates. The original analysis suggested that (a) preferential attention to the eyes was more pronounced for same-race faces than for cross-race faces, (b) preferential attention to the eyes was more pronounced for a novel ingroup than a novel outgroup, (c) preferential attention to the eyes was responsive to manipulations of motivation, and (d) preferential attention to the eyes was related to subsequent recognition accuracy. Although the first conclusion seems justified, the last three conclusions are either incorrect or unjustified based on the analyses reported in the article. When we correct for base rates, we see that most of the effects disappear. At the date of this writing, Kawakami and colleagues' article has 64 citations in Google scholar, including several that base their arguments on analyses we have shown to be incorrect (e.g., Xiao, Coppin, & Van Bavel, 2016). It is important for the field to acknowledge the error in these analyses and ensure that future theoretical and empirical work rests on a solid foundation. It is also important for researchers to understand the issues that gave rise to this mistake and ensure that, in future work, methods avoid this kind of confound or analyses appropriately adjust for it. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2014-25638-001.) Human faces, and more specifically the eyes, play a crucial role in social and nonverbal communication because they signal valuable information about others. It is therefore surprising that few studies have investigated the impact of intergroup contexts and motivations on attention to the eyes of ingroup and outgroup members. Four experiments investigated differences in eye gaze to racial and novel ingroups using eye tracker technology. Whereas Studies 1 and 3 demonstrated that White participants attended more to the eyes of White compared to Black targets, Study 2 showed a similar pattern of attention to the eyes of novel ingroup and outgroup faces. Studies 3 and 4 also provided new evidence that eye gaze is flexible and can be meaningfully influenced by current motivations. Specifically, instructions to individuate specific social categories increased attention to the eyes of target group members. Furthermore, the latter experiments demonstrated that preferential attention to the eyes of ingroup members predicted important intergroup biases such as recognition of ingroup over outgroup faces (i.e., the own-race bias; Study 3) and willingness to interact with outgroup members (Study 4). The implication of these findings for general theorizing on face perception, individuation processes, and intergroup relations are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Eye contact perception in high-functioning adults with autism spectrum disorder.

The detection of a self-directed gaze is often the starting point for social interactions and a person who feels as if they are being watched can prepare to respond to others' actions irrespective of the real gaze direction because the other person may likely be motivated to approach. Although many studies demonstrated that individuals with autism spectrum disorder have difficulty discriminating gaze direction, it remains unclear how the perception of self-directed gaze by individuals with autism spectrum disorder differs from that of age-, sex-, and IQ-matched typically developing individuals. Participants observed faces with various gaze directions and answered whether the person in the photograph was looking at them or not. Individuals with and without autism spectrum disorder were just as likely to perceive subtle averted gazes as self-directed gazes. The frequency of perceiving a self-directed gaze decreased as gaze aversion increased in both groups and, in general, individuals with autism spectrum disorder showed a comparable ability to perceive a self-directed gaze as that of typically developing individuals. Interestingly, considering face membership of photographs (ingroup or outgroup faces), typically developing individuals, but not individuals with autism spectrum disorder, were more likely to perceive self-directed gazes from ingroup faces than from outgroup faces. However, individuals with autism spectrum disorder had different affective experiences in response to ingroup and outgroup faces. These results suggest that individuals with autism spectrum disorder did not show an ingroup bias for the perception of a self-directed gaze, and raise a possibility that an atypical emotional experience contributes to the diminished ingroup bias.

Other-Groups Bias Effects: Recognizing Majority and Minority Outgroup Faces

A large literature has provided evidence that intergroup biases are common in facial recognition. In investigations of faces of different races, research has repeatedly demonstrated an Own Race Bias in which people are more accurate in recognizing racial ingroup compared to outgroup members. The primary goal of this research was to investigate whether participants from typically underrepresented populations in social psychological research (i.e., Blacks, South Asians, and East Asians) show biases in recognition accuracy when presented with ingroup faces and minority and majority outgroup faces. Not surprisingly, across three experiments, participants demonstrated superior recognition for faces of members of their own compared to other races. Although minority participants also demonstrated greater recognition accuracy for majority compared to minority outgroup faces, these effects were much smaller and typically nonsignificant. The implications of these findings for our understanding of basic processes in face perception, and intergroup relations, are discussed.

Patrolling the Borders: Experience with Multiple Out-Group Members is Associated with the Own-Ethnicity Effect

The own-ethnicity effect (OEE) is a recognition deficit for faces of other ethnic groups compared to one’s own group. Thirty-two border patrol (i.e., police) officers at a major international airport expected to have high frequency contact with multiple other ethnic group faces were compared with 32 bank employees and 64 students. German participants viewed out-group faces of African Americans, Mexican Americans/Mexican Nationals, and Turkish faces and German (in-group) faces in a standard recognition and a delayed-matching task. Generally, performance was better as a function of self-reported daily job contact for both tasks. Patrol officers were better with Black faces, while students were better with German faces for the standard recognition task. Although an OEE was present for all groups, it was attenuated for border patrol officers. Job contact with multiple out-groups was associated with face processing. Errors in recognition and matching faces of other ethnic groups pose problems for security in an increasingly global society. Customs agencies and security organizations employing an ethnically diverse workforce along with perceptual training for recognizing and matching out-group members will be better prepared to meet the demands of international security.

Are You In or Are You Out? The Importance of Group Saliency in Own-Group Biases in Face Recognition.

Previous research has demonstrated several own-group biases (OGBs) in face recognition, but why they occur is unclear. Social–cognitive accounts suggest they stem from differential attention and facial processing, following the categorisation of a face as belonging to an “in” or “out” group. Three studies explored whether OGBs can be produced by mere categorisation at encoding and investigated the role of in-group membership saliency on face recognition. Participants saw 40 facial images fictionally grouped according to in-/out-group status. Studies 1 and 2 used university membership as the grouping variable and found no evidence of an OGB, and no relationship between OGB magnitude and salience of group membership. Study 3 used the same design as Study 2, but with a highly salient group characteristic: participants’ stance on the U.K. Referendum (i.e., whether they were “Leave” or “Remain” supporters). In this case, an asymmetrical OGB was found, with only Remain voters demonstrating an OGB. Furthermore, a relationship between OGB magnitude and attitude toward the Referendum result was found. Overall, our results suggest that social categorisation and membership saliency alone may not be enough to moderate in- and out-group face recognition. However, when sufficiently polarised groups are used as in-/out-group categories, OGBs may occur.

Positive intergroup contact modulates fusiform gyrus activity to black and white faces

In this study, we investigated the effect of intergroup contact on processing of own- and other-race faces using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Previous studies have shown a neural own-race effect with greater BOLD response to own race compared to other race faces. In our study, white participants completed a social-categorization task and an individuation task while viewing the faces of both black and white strangers after having answered questions about their previous experiences with black people. We found that positive contact modulated BOLD activity in the right fusiform gyrus (rFG) and left inferior occipital gyrus (lIOC), regions associated with face processing. Within these regions, higher positive contact was associated with higher activity when processing black, compared to white faces during the social categorisation task. We also found that in both regions a greater amount of individuating experience with black people was associated with greater activation for black vs. white faces in the individuation task. Quantity of contact, implicit racial bias and negatively valenced contact showed no effects. Our findings suggest that positive contact and individuating experience directly modulate processing of out-group faces in the visual cortex, and illustrate that contact quality rather than mere familiarity is an important factor in reducing the own race face effect.

Acute stress reduces out-group related safety signaling during fear reinstatement in women

When using in-group and out-group faces as conditional stimuli (CS) in fear conditioning designs, extinction learning is selectively impaired for out-group faces. Additionally, stress seems to inhibit extinction retrieval leading to a higher return of fear, which might be especially the case for out-group faces. To test this hypothesis, 51 healthy women underwent fear acquisition training, consisting of repeated presentations of two in-group and two out-group faces. One of each (CS+) was paired with an electrical stimulation (unconditional stimulus, UCS), whereas the other was not coupled with the UCS (CS−). During immediate extinction training, all CS were presented again. On the next day, a retrieval and reinstatement test took place after a stress or a control procedure. Confirming previous research, impaired extinction learning occurred for out-group relative to in-group faces. During the reinstatement test, stress specifically increased responding towards the out-group CS−, thus reducing its safety signaling properties. So, stress seems to reduce the ability to adequately distinguish threat and safety cues after aversive experiences mimicked by reinstatement shocks.

Effects of Baby Schema and Mere Exposure on Explicit and Implicit Face Processing.

In an increasingly multicultural society, the way people perceive individuals from the same vs different ethnic groups greatly affects their own and societal well-being. Two psychological effects that influence these perceptions are the Mere-Exposure Effect (MRE), wherein familiarity with certain objects or persons suffices for people to develop a preference for them, and the Baby Schema (BS), a set of specific facial features that evokes caregiving behaviors and an affective orientation in adults. In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether these two effects play a role in implicit physiological responses to babies vs. adults faces belonging to participants in-group vs. out-group. In study 1, the pupillary diameter of 62 Caucasian participants (M = 31; F = 31) who observed adult and infant faces of different ethnic groups (Caucasian, Chinese) was measured. In study 2, brain waves of 38 Caucasian participants (M = 19; F = 19), who observed the same set of faces, were recorded using EEG. In both studies, adults explicit preferences (i.e., attitudes) toward faces were assessed using questionnaires. In Study 1, females showed greater attention to infant than adult faces (BS effect) in both pupils, regardless of the ethnic group of the face. By contrast, males attended to infant more than adult faces for out-group faces only (BS effect). In Study 2, greater left posterior-parietal alpha activation toward out-group compared to in-group adult faces was found in males (MRE). Participants with a low BS effect toward in-group baby faces exhibited greater left posterior alpha activation to out-group than in-group baby faces (MRE). These findings reveal how different levels of sensitivity to in-group infants may moderate perceptions of both in-group and out-group baby faces. Questionnaire measures on attitudes showed that males and females preferred in-group to out-group adult faces (MRE). Participants in Study 2 also reported a greater preference for infants than adults faces (BS effect). These findings explicate the roles of gender and the Baby Schema effect in moderating implicit processing of in-group and out-group faces, despite their lack in moderating explicit reports. Contradictory findings at the implicit (physiological) and explicit (self-report) levels suggest that differential processing of faces may occur at a non-conscious level.

The fan effect influences face recognition but does not moderate the own-age bias

ABSTRACTThe fan effect shows that memory is superior for information associated with few contexts relative to information associated with many contexts. The current study examined the fan effect within face recognition. Participants studied faces in which eye regions were associated with only one face (low-fan) or several faces (high-fan). Additionally, we examined whether featural fan might moderate in-group biases (i.e. in-group faces are better remembered than out-group faces). To this end, we manipulated occupation status (Experiment 1) and age (Experiment 2) of studied faces, and presented high- and low-fan faces. Results showed that low-fan faces were better remembered than high-fan faces. We did not detect an in-group bias as a function of occupation status, but there was a robust own-age bias. Fan type did not moderate the own-age bias, however. Although face recognition is sensitive to featural fan, the effect does not appear to differentially impact the own-age bias..

Outgroup faces hamper word recognition.

The present study explores socio-cultural priming in native-language processing. Caucasian Italian native speakers completed a written lexical decision task. Written stimuli were preceded by either a prime "white" face (ingroup condition) or a prime "black" face (outgroup condition). Face priming effects were observed in three experiments using different stimuli. Participants were slower in categorizing words, but not non-words, when preceded by an outgroup face than by an ingroup face. Several psycholinguistic variables were manipulated to localize the levels of processing that are affected by socio-cultural prime. The lack of effect with non-word items excludes the possibility that the face priming effect arises at perceptual or attentive levels of processing. In addition, we observed that while the face priming effect does not interact with lexical dimensions, it does interact with a semantic dimension such as imageability. The results indicate that social categories extracted from faces may modulate lexico-semantic processing. Interestingly, such a modulation would occur in the context of a quick and automatic process like visual word recognition in a person's native language.

Intentionally remembering or forgetting own- and other-race faces: Evidence from directed forgetting.

People are better at remembering faces of their own relative to another ethnic group. This so-called own-race bias (ORB) has been explained in terms of differential perceptual expertise for own- and other-race faces or, alternatively, as resulting from socio-cognitive factors. To test predictions derived from the latter account, we examined item-method directed forgetting (DF), a paradigm sensitive to an intentional modulation of memory, for faces belonging to different ethnic and social groups. In a series of five experiments, participants during learning received cues following each face to either remember or forget the item, but at test were required to recognize all items irrespective of instruction. In Experiments 1 and 5, Caucasian participants showed DF for own-race faces only while, in Experiment 2, East Asian participants with considerable expertise for Caucasian faces demonstrated DF for own- and other-race faces. Experiments 3 and 4 found clear DF for social in- and outgroup faces. These results suggest that a modulation of face memory by motivational processes is limited to faces with which we have acquired perceptual expertise. Thus, motivation alone is not sufficient to modulate memory for other-race faces and cannot fully explain the ORB.

Social categorization and individuation in the own-age bias.

Young adults recognize other young adult faces more accurately than older adult faces, an effect termed the own-age bias (OAB). The categorization-individuation model (CIM) proposes that recognition memory biases like the OAB occur as unfamiliar faces are initially quickly categorized. In-group faces are seen as socially relevant which motivates the processing of individuating facial features. Outgroup faces are processed more superficially with attention to category-specific information which hinders subsequent recognition. To examine the roles of categorization and individuation in the context of the OAB, participants completed a face recognition task and a speeded age categorization task including young and older adult faces. In the recognition task, half of the participants were given instructions aimed to encourage individuation of other-age faces. An OAB emerged that was not influenced by individuation instructions, but the magnitude of the OAB was correlated with performance in the categorization task. The larger the categorization advantage for older adult over young adult faces, the larger the OAB. These results support the premise that social categorization processes can affect the subsequent recognition of own- and other-age faces, but do not provide evidence for the effectiveness of individuation instructions in reducing the OAB.

Perceiving Animacy in Own-and Other-Species Faces.

Though artificial faces of various kinds are rapidly becoming more and more life-like due to advances in graphics technology (Suwajanakorn et al., 2015; Booth et al., 2017), observers can typically distinguish real faces from artificial faces. In general, face recognition is tuned to experience such that expert-level processing is most evident for faces that we encounter frequently in our visual world, but the extent to which face animacy perception is also tuned to in-group vs. out-group categories remains an open question. In the current study, we chose to examine how the perception of animacy in human faces and dog faces was affected by face inversion and the duration of face images presented to adult observers. We hypothesized that the impact of these manipulations may differ as a function of species category, indicating that face animacy perception is tuned for in-group faces. Briefly, we found evidence of such a differential impact, suggesting either that distinct mechanisms are used to evaluate the “life” in a face for in-group and out-group faces, or that the efficiency of a common mechanism varies substantially as a function of visual expertise.

Music-evoked nostalgia increases the trustworthiness of out-group faces

Music-evoked nostalgia increases the trustworthiness of out-group faces

Investigating the other-race effect in working memory.

People have difficulties in remembering other-race faces; this so-called other-race effect (ORE) has been frequently observed in long-term recognition memory (LTM). Several theories argue that the ORE in LTM is caused by differences in earlier processing stages, such as encoding of ingroup and outgroup faces. We test this hypothesis by exploring whether the ORE can already be observed in visual working memory (VWM)-an intermediate system located between encoding processes and LTM storage. In four independent experiments, we observed decreased performance for outgroup faces compared to ingroup faces using three different VWM tasks: an adaptive N-back task, a self-ordered pointing task, and a change detection task. Also, we found that the number of items stored in VWM is smaller for outgroup faces than for ingroup faces. Further, we explored whether performance differences in the change detection task are related to the classic ORE in recognition memory. Our results provide further evidence that the ORE originates during earlier stages of cognitive processing. We discuss that (how) future ORE research may benefit from considering theories and evidence from the VWM literature.

Recognizing Emily and Latisha: Inconsistent Effects of Name Stereotypicality on the Other-Race Effect.

A person’s name may activate social category information, which has been shown to lead to stereotyping and discrimination in various contexts. However, no previous research has investigated the influence of names on more basic processes of person perception. We present a set of seven experimental studies examining the influence of names on face recognition, namely, on the other-race effect (i.e., the relative difficulty to recognize outgroup faces). White-American participants completed online recognition tasks with White ingroup faces and Black or Chinese outgroup faces. Outgroup faces were presented with typical outgroup names versus typical White names; White faces were presented with typical White names versus infrequent names. We expected better recognition of outgroup faces with typical White names compared to outgroup faces with typical outgroup names. Employing an internal meta-analysis, we observe overall evidence of a small but significant effect (dz = 0.11). However, the pattern of results across the seven studies is inconsistent. Given that particularly the high-powered pre-registered studies did not show an effect, we suggest that the effect should be interpreted with caution. We discuss that a small effect may still have important implications for real life as well as for theories of the ORE, emphasizing the importance of future research regarding the influence of name typicality on inter-group face perception.

Attending to identity cues reduces the own-age but not the own-race recognition advantage

Adults’ ability to recognize individual faces is shaped by experience. Young adults recognize own-age and own-race faces more accurately than other-age and other-race faces. The own-age and own-race biases have been attributed to differential perceptual experience and to differences in how in-group vs. out-group faces are processed, with in-group faces being processed at the individual level and out-group faces being processed at the categorical level. To examine this social categorization hypothesis, young adults studied young and older faces in Experiment 1 and own- and other-race faces in Experiment 2. During the learning phase the identity-matching group viewed faces in pairs and completed a same/different task designed to enhance attention to individuating cues; the passive-viewing group memorized faces presented individually. After the learning phase, all participants completed an identical old/new recognition task. Both passive-viewing groups showed the expected recognition bias, but divergent patterns were observed in the identity-matching groups. Whereas the identity-matching task eliminated the own-age bias, it neither eliminated nor reduced the own-race bias. Collectively, these results suggest that categorization-individuation processes do not play the same role in explaining the two recognition biases.