The Role of Implicit Racial Attitudes and Universal Orientation in Cross-Racial Face Recognition

• Main Author: Campbell, Gordon
• Format: Others
• Published: TopSCHOLAR® 2002
• Subjects: Cognition and Perception; Psychology; Sociology
• Online Access: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/622; http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1625&context=theses

The "other-race" effect refers to the common observation that individuals are better at remembering faces of their own race than faces of another race. The relevance of the "other-race" effect to social interaction between people of different races and eyewitness identification of criminal suspects has spurred much research into uncovering the nature of the asymmetry between recognition of own- and otherrace faces. So far, however, many attempts to consistently demonstrate factors that contribute to the "other-race" effect have failed. One of the factors that may play a role in the "other-race" effect, but has yet to be shown to do so empirically, is racial attitudes. Past research attempting to link racial attitudes to cross-race face recognition has mainly used explicit measures of racial attitudes. The goal of the current study was to find out if explicit racial attitudes, implicit racial attitudes, and a personal social outlook of "inclusiveness" relate to the "other-race" effect. White participants completed explicit attitudes measures, a measure of "inclusiveness," the Bona Fide Pipeline procedure (Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995), and a short priming task designed to assess racial attitudes. Explicit racial attitudes were found to relate to the "other-race" effect in a nonlinear manner. Implicit racial attitudes measured by the Bona Fide pipeline did not relate to the "other-race" effect, but implicit racial attitudes measured by the short priming task related to cross-race face recognition in a linear manner. Scores from the measure of "inclusiveness" as a social outlook did not relate to the "other-race" effect. Implications for research on the "other-race" effect and the Bona Fide Pipeline procedure are discussed.