hide
Free keywords:
-
Abstract:
People recognize own race faces better than those from other races. This other race effect in face recognition has been attributed to differences in holistic processing (Michel, et al., 2006; Tanaka, et al., 2004), in contact (Hancock Rhodes, 2008; Rhodes et al., 2009), and in the motivation to individualize faces (Hugenberg, et al., 2010).
Here I would like to present two studies that tested whether the other race effect is dependent upon the relative engagement of holistic and feature processing at encoding. We manipulated face format at encoding so that the holistic processing was either disrupted or completely removed. The results showed that the other race effect observed under normal face encoding was either eliminated or reversed (i.e., an other race advantage). These results provide a strong support for an encoding dependent account
of the other race effect, which might also underlie the effects of racial contact and face individualization on the other race effect observed in prior research.