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. 2024 Feb;50(2):285-298.
doi: 10.1177/01461672221125599. Epub 2022 Nov 5.

A Lower-Class Advantage in Face Memory

Pia Dietze  1   2 , Sally Olderbak  3 , Andrea Hildebrandt  4 , Laura Kaltwasser  5 , Eric D Knowles  1
Affiliations

A Lower-Class Advantage in Face Memory

Pia Dietze et al. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

People remember what they deem important. In line with research suggesting that lower-class (vs. higher class) individuals spontaneously appraise other people as more relevant, we show that social class is associated with the habitual use of face memory. We find that lower-class (vs. higher class) participants exhibit better incidental memory for faces (i.e., spontaneous memory for faces they had not been instructed to memorize; Studies 1 and 2). No social-class differences emerge for faces participants are instructed to learn (Study 2), suggesting that this pattern reflects class-based relevance appraisals rather than memory ability. Study 3 extends our findings to eyewitness identification. Lower-class (vs. higher-class) participants' eyewitness accuracy is less impacted by the explicit relevance of a target (clearly relevant thief vs. incidental bystander). Integrative data analysis shows a robust negative association between social class and spontaneous face memory. Preregistration (Studies 1 and 3) and cross-cultural replication (Study 2) further strengthen the results.

Keywords: eyewitness identification; face memory; relevance appraisals; social class.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Scatter plot and regression line for the relationships between social class and incidental face memory performance, r(382) = −.177, p < .001.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Scatter plots and regression lines for the relationships between social class and explicit memory performance, r(192) = −.061, p = .397, and social class and incidental memory performance, r(192) = −.214, p = .003.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Structural equation model estimating the relationship between social class and explicit vs. incidental face memory. Note. iFM1, iFM2, and iFM3 represent the three consecutive blocks of iFM tasks; eFM1 and eFM2 represent the immediate and delayed eFM tasks. The coefficients in the parentheses are the results when we control for ethnicity and study sample as covariates. iFM = incidental face memory; eFM = explicit face memory. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Participants in Study 3 watched a mock crime video and were asked to identify a thief (top row) and a bystander (bottom row) from a lineup of possible suspects. Note. Option B is the correct answer for the thief and option E is the correct answer for the bystander.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Predicted logistic regression lines and confidence bounds for the relationships between social class and eyewitness accuracy for the thief and bystander.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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