The Own-Race Bias for Face Recognition in a Multiracial Society

Abstract

The own-race bias (ORB) is a reliable phenomenon across cultural and racial groups where unfamiliar faces from other races are usually remembered more poorly than own-race faces (Meissner and Brigham, 2001). By adopting a yes-no recognition paradigm, we found that ORB was pronounced across race groups (Malaysian-Malay, Malaysian-Chinese, Malaysian-Indian, and Western-Caucasian) when faces were presented with only internal features (Experiment 1), implying that growing up in a profoundly multiracial society does not necessarily eliminate ORB. Using a procedure identical to Experiment 1, we observed a significantly greater increment in recognition performance for other-race faces than for own-race faces when the external features (e.g. facial contour and hairline) were presented along with the internal features (Experiment 2)-this abolished ORB. Contrary to assumptions based on the contact hypothesis, participants' self-reported amount of interracial contact on a social contact questionnaire did not significantly predict the magnitude of ORB. Overall, our findings suggest that the level of exposure to other-race faces accounts for only a small part of ORB. In addition, the present results also support the notion that different neural mechanisms may be involved in processing own- and other-race faces, with internal features of own-race faces being processed more effectively, whereas external features dominate representations of other-race faces.

Keywords: cross-cultural; face recognition; multiracial; other-race effect; own-race bias.

FIGURE 1

Examples of cropped stimuli with happy and neutral expressions used in Experiment 1. Each column shows a male (top) and a female (bottom) face for each race group (left to right, Malaysian–Chinese, Malaysian–Malay, Malaysian–Indian, and Western–Caucasian). The individuals depicted in this figure gave written informed consent to the publication of their images.

FIGURE 2

Recognition accuracy of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Caucasian participants for own- and other-race faces in the face recognition task. Error bars represent standard errors of the mean (**p < 0.01, *p < 0.05).

FIGURE 3

Examples of whole-face stimuli with smiling and neutral expressions used in Experiment 2. Each column shows a male and a female face for each race group (Malaysian–Chinese, Malaysian–Malay, Malaysian–Indian, and Western–Caucasian, respectively). The individuals depicted in this figure gave written informed consent to the publication of their images.

FIGURE 4

d′ for Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Caucasian faces in Chinese (A), Malay (B), Indian (C), and Caucasian (D) participants in the recognition task. Face recognition was impaired for face images without external features. Surprisingly, however, the absence of external features led to a greater decline in the participants’ ability to recognize other-race faces. Error bars represent standard error of the mean.