Other-race face perception

Abstract

The other-race effect (or own-race bias or cross-racial identification effect) refers to the finding that recognition memory tends to be better for faces of members of Ss' own race than for faces of members of other races. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that perceptual skills specific to identifying faces of particular racial groups contribute to this effect. On each of 50 trials, a photograph of a face was tachistoscopically presented for 120 msec, followed by a pattern mask and then a plain-view test pair composed of the previously presented face and a matched foil. As predicted, an other-race effect was obtained on this perceptual task: White Ss performed significantly more poorly on trials involving African American faces than on trials involving White faces, whereas no such difference was obtained among African American Ss. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)