Inconsistent individual personality description eliminates the other-race effect

Abstract

The present study investigated the effect of individual semantic information displayed simultaneously with faces on the other-race effect. Arbitrary descriptions of the individual personalities of a set of faces were initially evaluated for consistency. Later, 83 naïve participants were allocated to three groups in which they saw faces and consistent, inconsistent, or neutral personality information about each face. Later, they completed a recognition task for the faces. The other-race effect was observed only in the control group and the consistent-information group, but not in the inconsistent-information group. This showed that inconsistent individual semantic information for each face can help to individuate these faces and eliminated the other-race effect.

Face-blind for other-race faces: Individual differences in other-race recognition impairments.

“…The ORE occurs across the world and in multiple different race combinations. For example, it has been found for Asians looking at Caucasian faces and vice versa in both Asian countries (e.g., China, Korea), and Western countries (e.g., Europe, U.S., Australia; Hayward, Rhodes, & Schwaninger, 2008; Michel, Rossion, Han, Chung, & Caldara, 2006a; Tullis, Benjamin, & Liu, 2014; Wan, Crookes, Reynolds, Irons, & McKone, 2015; Zhang, Zhou, Pu, & Hayward, 2011), and for Caucasians looking at African-American faces (e.g., Hugenberg, Miller, & Claypool, 2007) and vice versa (e.g., Pauker et al, 2009) in the U.S.…”

Why the other‐race effect matters: Poor recognition of other‐race faces impacts everyday social interactions

“…The other‐race effect (ORE) – poorer ability to recognize other‐race than own‐race faces – is well established in laboratory experiments. Hundreds of published experimental studies over 50+ years have established many basic facts about the ORE, including that the ORE affects both face memory and face perception, can result in both false negatives (failing to recognize a previously seen other‐race person) and false positives (falsely ‘recognizing’ an unknown other‐race person as familiar), can impair the process of making new faces familiar, and occurs across the world for multiple‐race combinations (e.g., Dawel et al., 2019; Hayward, Favelle, Oxner, Chu, & Lam, 2017; Meissner & Brigham, 2001; Michel, Rossion, Han, Chung, & Caldara, 2006; Tanaka, Kiefer, & Bukach, 2004; Tullis, Benjamin, & Liu, 2014; Zhang, Zhou, Pu, & Hayward, 2011; Zhou, Matthews, Baker, & Mondloch, 2018).…”