Other attributes
The cross-race effect (sometimes called cross-race bias, other-race bias, own-race bias or other-race effect) is the tendency to more easily recognize faces that belong to one's own racial group. In social psychology, the cross-race effect is described as the "ingroup advantage," whereas in other fields, the effect can be seen as a specific form of the "ingroup advantage" since it is only applied in interracial or inter-ethnic situations. The cross-race effect is thought to contribute to difficulties in cross-race identification, as well as implicit racial bias.
Multiple theories as to why the cross-race effect exists have been conceived, including social cognition and perceptual expertise. However, no model has been able to fully account for the full body of evidence, so multiple theories are still considered in the literature.
The first research study on the cross-race effect was published in 1914. It stated that humans tend to perceive people of other races than themselves to all look alike. All else being equal, individuals of a given race are distinguishable from each other in proportion to their familiarity or contact with the race as a whole. Thus, to the uninitiated white, all East Asian people look alike, while to East Asian people, all white people look alike. This does not hold true when people of different races familiarize themselves with races different from their own.
As research into the cross-race effect continued, multiple theories arose as to why the effect exists, including the contact hypothesis, different processing mechanisms, social cognition, feature selection, and cognitive disregard. However, each of these theories have their own challenges and conflicting evidence.
Numerous studies on the cross-race effect have occurred. However, improvements in technology has allowed for researchers to study the cross-race effect from a neural and/or computational lens. Despite both occurring under the umbrella of facial processing, researchers have found that different areas of the brain activate when processing own-race vs other-race faces. Research using computational models have found that the other race effect only occurs when facial processing and feature selection is influenced by biased experience. However, as use of these methods to examine the cross-race effect is relatively new, further research is still needed.
Cross-race effect has a strong connection with the ingroup advantage phenomenon. With ingroup advantage, people evaluate and judge members of their own self-defined group as being better and fairer than members of other groups (outgroup disadvantage). Social psychologists have demonstrated in the last 30 years that even the smallest aspect of differentiation, like preference for flavor of ice cream or style of music, can trigger ingroup advantage. If the group-building factor is a person's race, then cross-race effect appears.
A meta-analysis of several studies about emotion recognition in facial expressions revealed that people could recognize and interpret the emotional facial expression of a person of their own race faster and better than of a person of another race. These findings apply to all races in the same way. Some studies show that other races, compared to one's own race, have differently shaped faces and different details within a facial expression, making it difficult for members of other races to decode emotional expressions. However, studies have shown that the mood of the observer does not affect the cross-race effect.
Research has shown that people tend to think more categorically about outgroup members and more individually about ingroup members. For example, outgroup members may associate specific facial features with a particular race or ethnicity, and do not notice the subtle variations in skin tone, lip size, or brow strength that ingroup members recognize. Categorical thinking happens more consistently for outgroup participants while individuation does the exact opposite. These different views between outgroup and ingroup members have been known to bias conceptual cognitive processes and show that the cross-race effect actually has less to do with race than with different levels of cognitive processing that occur for ingroup and outgroup members.
Another set of cognitive theories related to cross-race effect focuses on how social categorization and individuation biases face memory. Some researchers believe that the inability for ingroup members' to recognize differences in the features of outgroup members can be explained through cognitive disregard. They find that the likelihood of falsely identifying a member of an out-group stems from an automatic encoding of a face without processing its unique features. Thus, when presented with an out-group member who has a similar face to the one that was encoded, the in-group member automatically, but incorrectly determines that the face has been "seen" before. These studies conclude that diminishing the cross race effect requires individuals to process ethnically-differing faces with the goal of encoding with individuation.
Depth of processing also influences the presence of the cross race effect. Same-race faces are more correctly and easily discerned because deep processing, than other-race faces are. This hypothesis, however, is controversial because of its inability to be replicated within studies.
There are two challenges to the social cognition models (a) mixed evidence dealing with race accessibility, face perception, and memory and (b) the effects of development and training on the cross-race effect. Regarding the mixed evidence, the popular belief is that the more someone is exposed to people of different races the less likely they will be affected by the cross-race effect. There have been studies that support this theory, but other research has shown mixed results. For example, the results of studies done where the accessibility, as in how easy or not it is for a person to be around people of difference races, to different races is manipulated, showed that this does not always affect face memory. Second regarding the development and training effects, just because someone shows improvement with dealing with the cross-race effect due to exposure to cross race training or experience, it is not a direct prediction of a good social cognitive model. For the social cognitive model to start explaining such effects there would have to be evidence that ingroup and outgroup distinctions occur developmentally at the exact time the cross-race effect emerges in a child. There is some evidence showing when the cross-race effect first emerges, but there is little research directly testing the onset of ingroup and outgroup recognition biases in young children.
While social cognition models indicate a lack of effort to individuate other-race faces explains the cross-race effect, some research has challenged this by arguing that individuals do not spend less effort looking at other-race faces than same-race ones.
The perceptual expertise theory also suggest that if we identify the perceptual learning mechanisms that control perceptual expertise with face and non-face stimuli we will understand the cross-race effect. There are many models that deal with perceptual expertise, but all of these models share the idea that a human's face processing ability does not generalize equally to all faces. Hence, these theories propose that racial segregation results in people developing better expertise in distinguishing between faces of our own race or of a different race. Research around these theories also suggests that the more a child is exposed to cross-race face processing the lower the cross-race effect. However, if the child is not exposed to a lot of cross-race face processing the cross-race effect can increase. Furthermore, there is evidence that long term and short term exposure to cross-race face processing can improve recognition. In this view, the cross-race effect may not actually be a distinct, individual effect but rather an example of a larger difficulty in humans with the capacity to recognise unfamiliar groups and categories (such as unfamiliar sounds, animals, car models etc).
Challenges to the perceptual expertise models are the mixed evidence for the interracial contact hypothesis, and the varied results of the training effect. The mixed evidence shows that although there is some support to the theory that the more interracial contact a person has the better a person is at cross-race recognition, all the evidence gathered does not come to the same conclusion. This mixture of results causes the relationship between cross-race exposure and recognition ability to weaken. However, there may also be a third factor that contributes to these inconsistent findings. There is some evidence that the quality of cross-race contact has an effect on this relationship. For example, research supports the position that to be able to recognize cross-race faces one has to be attentive and effortful when encoding the face into memory. Training individuals has been shown to reduce the cross race effect in people, however this quick onset is coupled with a quick off set of the ability. Although, this short term training can translate into long term training, it is not the same as actually having real life experience with the cross-race effect. Finally, there are also other processes besides perceptual expertise that can influence cross-race recognition.
Another reason the cross-race-effect may occur is that perceptions are often affected by motivations, expectations, and social cognition. Overall, the creation of norms has shaped and biased even simple perceptions such as line lengths. In terms of perception of faces, studies have shown that racially ambiguous faces that have been identified as one race or another based on their hairstyle are identified as having more features of the racial category represented by the hairstyle. Similarly, faces of an ambiguous but equal shade are interpreted as darker or lighter when accompanied by the label of either "black" or "white", respectively. Other social cognitive biases may also have the ability to overpower the cross-race-effect. A study has shown that social perception of wealth has the ability to modulate the effect: when the targets were seen as impoverished, the difference in facial recognition disappeared.
