Cross race effect

The cross-race effect cross-race effect is the tendency to more easily recognize faces that belong to one’s own racial group, or racial groups that one has been in contact with.

It is an in-group advantage.

The cross-race effect is thought to contribute to difficulties in cross-race identification, as well as implicit racial bias.

Humans tend to perceive people of other races than themselves to all look alike.

Individuals of a given race are distinguishable from each other in proportion to their familiarity or contact with the race as a whole.

This does not hold true when people of different races familiarize themselves with races different from their own.

Different areas of the brain (such as the fusiform face area) activate when processing own-race vs other-race faces.

Cross-race effect has a strong connection with the ingroup advantage phenomenon.

Ingroup advantage refers to people evaluating and judge members of their own self-defined group as being better and fairer than members of other groups.

Even the smallest aspect of differentiation, can trigger ingroup advantage.

If the group-building factor is a person’s race, then cross-race effect appears.

People could recognize and interpret the emotional facial expression of a person of their own race faster and better than of a person of another race: These findings apply to all races in the same way.

Other races, compared to one’s own race, have differently shaped faces and different details within a facial expression, making it difficult for members of other races to decode emotional expressions.

Outgroup members may associate specific facial features with a particular race or ethnicity, and do not notice the subtle variations in skin tone, lip size, or brow strength that ingroup members recognize.

Cross-race effect actually has less to do with race than with different levels of cognitive processing that occur for ingroup and outgroup members.

There are two challenges to the social cognition models (a) mixed evidence dealing with race accessibility, face perception, and memory and (b) the effects of development and training on the cross-race effect.

There is mixed evidence in the popular belief is that the more someone is exposed to people of different races the less likely they will be affected by the cross-race effect.

Social cognition models indicate a lack of effort to individuate other-race faces explains the cross-race effect.

The more a child is exposed to cross-race face processing the lower the cross-race effect.

However, if the child is not exposed to a lot of cross-race face processing the cross-race effect can increase.

Long term and short term exposure to cross-race face processing can improve recognition: mixed evidence shows that although there is some support to the theory that the more interracial contact a person has the better a person is at cross-race recognition, all the evidence gathered does not come to the same conclusion.

People look at different facial features in same- versus other-race faces.

The cross race effect can be reduced by continual exposure to ethnic groups that differ from one’s own.

The more intimate the contact, the higher the chances become of accurately recognizing a member of a different ethnicity than one’s own.

The cross-race effect is evident among all people of all different races.

The facial appearance is morphologically different for different ethnic backgrounds, and is the basis of cross race effect.

The cross-race effect has been observed for adult faces, but research indicates that infant faces do not produce a cross-race effect, as infant faces seem to automatically draw the viewer’s attention with the ethnicity of the infant having no effect.

The accuracy of eyewitness memory is significantly affected by the ethnic identity of both the suspect and the eye-witness; an individual can more accurately recognize a face belonging to his or her race than an individual whose race differs from that of his or her own.

As an individual grows older and encounters more members of the other ethnic group in question, the ethnic differences wears off and makes it less distracting, and the individual can pay higher absolute and relative amounts of attention to subtle distinctions between members of that group.

Conversely, time also increases the individual’s exposure to biases prevalent in his/her own in-group.

Correct identification of the suspect occurs more often when the eyewitness and the suspect were of the same race.

If a target is very distinctive or very attractive, it could reduce the cross-race effect because that person would be easier to identify.

When making financial decisions, specific facial characteristics and implicit bias can influence the perceived trustworthiness of another person.

The cross-race effect could be reduced and sometimes even eliminated when participants were wary of it.

There is an own-gender bias, suggesting that this comes down to hair style recognition.

Also, there is an own-age bias where people are better at recognizing people of a similar age as themselves.