The Motivated Origins of the Cross Race Effect

Miami University, Oxford OH

Investigators

Abstract

This project investigates the mechanisms underlying the Cross-Race Effect (CRE), or the tendency to more accurately recognize members of one?s own racial group compared to members of other racial groups. Despite the robustness of the CRE across experimental contexts, coming to agreement on a satisfying theoretical account for this troubling effect has proven difficult. Perhaps the longest standing explanation for the CRE is the perceptual expertise hypothesis. In essence, de facto segregation leads to individuals having no experience with cross-race faces, leading to worse recognition. Although this is certainly part of the CRE, recent evidence suggests it is not the entire story. To this end, the current research will investigate the extent to which differential motives to individuate SR and CR faces rather than differential expertise, can account for the CRE. Across 12 experiments, this proposal tests the hypothesis that inducing perceivers to individuate faces will substantially improve recognition, and alone can even account for the CRE. This research tests the hypothesis that individuation motives can be induced through a shared group membership (e.g., a same-race face, a shared university affiliation), through a targets? behavior (e.g., an individual acting in a powerful manner), or even through egocentrism (e.g., a target being similar to the self). More importantly, these individuation motives are predicted to change how faces are processed. Individuated faces (e.g., SR faces) are predicted to elicit more attention and to draw attention toward identity-diagnostic regions of the face (e.g., the eyes). Finally, directly contradicting expertise models, the motivated origins of the CRE predict that under situations where individuals are motivated to perceive ingroups as homogeneous (e.g., identity threat) should actually reduce the ostensibly highly expert SR face processing and recognition. This targets a chronic, real-world social problem that typically disadvantages minority populations. The research outlined here will substantially graduate and undergraduate training by involving a diverse pool of graduate and undergraduate researchers. Finally, this motivated model of the CRE offers a novel means of reducing the potentially deleterious consequences of the CRE: individuation. The PI's plans to disseminate results of this research with potential real world impacts that will ultimately motivate perceivers to process information about others differently.