Increased Contact Can Reduce the Other-Race Effect in Face Recognition
As humans, we come into contact with many faces in a day. The capability of these homosapiens to precisely distinguish thousands of faces is incredible seeing that all faces have approximately the similar arrangement. Nevertheless, this “gift” does not spread similarly the same to all faces. Sporer (2001) stated that humans commonly exhibit weaker remembrance for faces of another race compared to own-race faces (as cited in Hancock and Rhodes, 2008). The majority of us must have heard this line, “How am I to know if I have ever seen the person previously? They all look the same to me.” When we hear an individual say this, we’re prone to assume that the individual is racist, but is it possible that there could be a particular theory behind the notion? This occurrence is identified as the Other-Race Effect (ORE) (ORE). Tanaka, Kiefer and Bukach (2004) mentioned that the Other-Race Effect (ORE) states that individuals have a higher probability to recall and identify faces of people who are from their own race rather instead of their own racial group. Extensive evidence has proven that adults are better at distinguishing faces of their own race than those of unfamiliar races (Meissner and Brigham, 2001). The Other-Race Effect (ORE) are not stemmed from the intrinsic variances in the discriminability of diverse populations of faces. Instead, it is due to the different approaches people process own and other-race faces (Rhodes et al., 2009). These different processing approaches consist of weaker configural (Tanaka, Kiefer and Bukach, 2004) and feature coding of the other-race faces. Configural coding can be defined as ability to process faces or objects as a whole whereas featural coding is the ability to process faces or object based on specific features of the face or object. The different processing approaches possibly arise from less contact with other-race population. (Rhodes et al,. 2009). The contact hypothesis by Allport (1954) clarifies the conflicting effects of race by proposing that increased contact between in-groups and out-groups will decrease prejudice and thus, develop better relationships within these members (as cited in Walker and Hewstone, 2006). Hence, the processing of other-race faces from the beginning perceptual periods can possibly be affected through contact. Walker and Hewstone’s (2006) study showed the connection between social exposure and an own-race effect in perceptual expertise. Therefore, people with more contact with other-race populations are expected to display a lesser own-race effect due to their ability to now process other-race faces in the same way they process the own-race faces.
A number of studies have displayed reliable results with this expectation that people with more other-race contact proved enhanced recognition of other-race faces. For example, Sangrigoli, Pallier, Argenti, Ventureyra and de Schonen (2005) presented that Korean adults adopted into European Caucasian families during the ages of three to nine were able to recognize Caucasian faces more precisely than Asian faces, while Korean participants brought up in Korea displayed otherwise. Besides that, Cross et al. (1971) also found that Caucasian and Black children from schools and areas where both races were mixed together displayed a reduced Other-Race Effect (ORE) than children from schools and areas that separates racial groups. Yet ironically, Cross et al. (1971) found that White children from areas that separate racial groups exhibited higher own-race effect than White children from areas where racial groups were mixed together but when tested with African American children from separated and mixed together neighborhoods, the results were not same. Despite the contact effects not being evident at all times, there is extensive indication that contact with the in-groups and out-groups, lead to Other-Race Effects (ORE) in face processing.
More exposure with other-race faces can decrease Other-Race Effects (ORE) in a few ways. Anzures et al. (2013) stated that increased contact with other-race individuals can lead to reduced prejudiced beliefs in adults and also children. Consequently, the drive to singularize them becomes higher. The second likelihood is that contact allows individuals perceptual learning techniques to alter the proportions on which faces are coded so that they efficiently signify differences inside a population they are used to with (Rhodes et al., 2009). The usefulness of these proportions, which consist of features and their spatial relations, is probable to differ among races.
Regardless of large support for the contact hypothesis, it is still not clear on how improved contact alters the means people use to process other-race faces. We reflect how contact impacts configural coding, as indexed by inverted decrements. Diamond and Carey (1986) found that recognition of faces is even harder when it is inverted compared to objects. However, findings stated that inversion decrements were most commonly applied as an indicator of configural coding (Rhodes et al., 2009) and have a tiny influence on the featural coding of faces. A number of studies supported this statement as they found that configural coding is better for own race instead of other-race faces (Murray, Rhodes &Schuchinsky, 2003; Rhodes et al., 1989; Sangrigoli & de Schonen, 2004). Thus, based on the findings of the studies above, it is sensible to propose that people with more contact would process faces via configural coding compared to people with lesser contact.
The current study inspects if increased contact with other-race faces can decrease the ORE. Also taking into consideration is whether the processing approaches used is configural coding. The hypothesis made is more contact with other-race faces would reduce the Other-Race Effect (ORE) in facial recognition. Besides that, a second hypothesis was also derived stating that improved contact with out-groups (other races) will enhance the use of configural coding when processing faces of out-groups.
Methodology
Design A between-group experimental design will be carried out to identify the quantity of contact with other-race faces with the influence on the other-race effect in face recognition and the use of configural coding during face recognition.
Subject
Participants are 30 White Americans students and 30 Chinese students, aged between 18 and 25 years old of all gender and . The Chinese subjects were recruited from University of California. The Chinese participants had different lengths of stay in America or any additional Western countries. This gave a difference in experience to the other races. On the other hand, the White American participants were recruited from University of California. The White American participants had stayed majority of their lives in America or other Western counties.
Measures and Stimulus Race contact questionnaire A likert scale consisting of fifteen items, which rates the level of agreement between participants with statements specifying contact and social interactions, was enacted base on Hancock and Rhode’s (2008) Race Contact Questionnaire (see Appendix 1). The items were rated on a scale of 1(very strongly disagree) to 6(very strongly agree). Study and test faces Forty photographs taken with digital camera were used in this study which consists of 20 White Americans and 20 Chinese, male, grey-scaled faces. The young adults in the photographs showed no emotions in their expressions and are photographed in a frontal pose. The pictures were cropped using Adobe Photoshop CS6 software to remove the neck and background details. All faces were displayed against a black frame to remove hair visibility. In the testing period, the pairs contained one study face and one new face. The faces are coordinated to several aspects such as race, gender and uniqueness. The images were shown next to each other (see Appendix 2).
Procedure
Participants will be given a consent form and also be informed of their confidentiality and rights to decline from the study. Participants will also be presented with a demographic form to fill in their details. The participants will first view 10 complete faces which comprised of five White Americans and five Chinese faces. Each of the faces will be shown two times for approximately ten seconds during both periods. Participants will be told to keep in mind the faces as they will have a memory test after that. In the study period, participants will be, then, presented with 20 test stimuli which consist of ten old faces and 10 new faces, and the photographs are upright or inverted. The purpose of this was to evaluate whether the face recognition was processed through configural or featural coding.
Participants will be asked to point out if the stimulus presented was novel or if they have seen the image previously via two buttons labeled N (new) or O (old). In addition to that, participants will also be told that they are only allowed to look straight although the photographs displayed had inverted faces. At the end of the study, Chinese participants will be asked to fill up the race contact questionnaire. After the experiment, the participants will be thanked.
Results
A three-way ANOVA will be carried out to examine the presence of other-race effect in face recognition, and inversion decrements were greater for in-group faces instead of out-group faces. To examine the contact hypothesis, a multiple regression test will be used to test if the cross-race variances in configural coding expected the other-race effect in recognition.