Broadening the stimulus set: Introducing the American Multiracial Faces Database

Abstract

Face-based perceptions form the basis for how people behave towards each other and, hence, are central to understanding human interaction. Studying face perception requires a large and diverse set of stimuli in order to make ecologically valid, generalizable conclusions. To date, there are no publicly available databases with a substantial number of Multiracial or racially ambiguous faces. Our systematic review of the literature on Multiracial person perception documented that published studies have relied on computer-generated faces (84% of stimuli), Black-White faces (74%), and male faces (63%). We sought to address these issues, and to broaden the diversity of available face stimuli, by creating the American Multiracial Faces Database (AMFD). The AMFD is a novel collection of 110 faces with mixed-race heritage and accompanying ratings of those faces by naive observers that are freely available to academic researchers. The faces (smiling and neutral expression poses) were rated on attractiveness, emotional expression, racial ambiguity, masculinity, racial group membership(s), gender group membership(s), warmth, competence, dominance, and trustworthiness. The large majority of the AMFD faces are racially ambiguous and can pass into at least two different racial categories. These faces will be useful to researchers seeking to study Multiracial person perception as well as those looking for racially ambiguous faces in order to study categorization processes in general. Consequently, the AMFD will be useful to a broad group of researchers who are studying face perception.

A review of White‐centering practices in multiracial research in social psychology

“…Thus, the identities held by participants and represented by stimuli in multiracial research reveal White-centering (and US-focused) research practices. 1 The results provide concrete support for the possibility raised in prior work that multiracial research focuses on the perspectives of White perceivers and multiracial participants with White ancestry (Chen, 2019; and lacks stimuli diversity of multiracial people (Chen et al, 2021;Ma et al, 2020). Next, we discuss how overrepresentations of White perspectives constitute…”

Why is the literature on first impressions so focused on White faces?

“…More recently, diverse collections of facial stimuli have been made available to researchers. These new image sets include the Bogazici Face Database [91], the Chicago Face Database [92], the RADIATE Stimulus Set [93], the American Multiracial Faces Database [94] and the MR2 Face Database [95]. Access to these resources means that there are no longer logistical impediments preventing the use of diverse face stimuli in first impressions research.…”

Are you one of us: Investigating cultural differences in determining group membership

“…We asked participants to rate ten real Asian‐White biracial people's faces (ten male, ten female). The faces were selected from the American Multiracial Faces Database (Chen et al., 2020) and the Chicago Face Database (Ma et al., 2015). Because Study 2 would match the target gender and participant gender, pretest participants only evaluated the faces of their reported gender.…”