Two Factors in Face Recognition: Whether You Know the Person's Face and Whether You Share the Person's Race. (June 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhou, Xingchen; Burton, A. M.; Jenkins, Rob
• Is Part Of: Perception. Volume 50:Number 6(2021)
• Page Start: 524
• Page End: 539
• Publication Date: 2021-06
• Subjects: face perception -- memory -- cognition -- social cognition, familiarity, other-race effect; Perception -- Periodicals; Perception -- Periodicals; Perception; Periodicals; 153.705
• DOI: 10.1177/03010066211014016
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0301-0066

Abstract

One of the best-known phenomena in face recognition is the other-race effect, the observation that own-race faces are better remembered than other-race faces. However, previous studies have not put the magnitude of other-race effect in the context of other influences on face recognition. Here, we compared the effects of (a) a race manipulation (own-race/other-race face) and (b) a familiarity manipulation (familiar/unfamiliar face) in a 2 × 2 factorial design. We found that the familiarity effect was several times larger than the race effect in all performance measures. However, participants expected race to have a larger effect on others than it actually did. Face recognition accuracy depends much more on whether you know the person's face than whether you share the same race.