Cross-race effect
Encyclopedia
Cross-race effect is the tendency for people of one race to have difficulty recognizing and processing faces and facial expressions of members of a race or ethnic group
other than their own.
The cross-race effect is scientifically explored in the fields of behavioral biology, human ethology
(also called urban ethology), and social psychology
. In this neural phenomenon of face recognition, humans perform better when they recognize faces and emotional facial expressions of persons of their own race in comparison to faces and emotional facial expressions of persons of other races. In Social Psychology the cross-race effect is described as the "In-Group Advantage". In other fields, the effect can be seen as a special form of the "In-group advantage", since it is only applied in interracial or inter-ethnic situations, whereas “In-Group Advantage” can refer to mono-ethnic situations as well.
Deeper study of the cross-race effect has also demonstrated two types of processing for the recognition of faces, featural and holistic. It has been found that holistic processing (which occurs beyond individual parts of the face) is more commonly used in same-race situations, but there is an experience effect, which means that as a person gains more experience with those of race he or she will begin to use more holistic processing. Featural processing is much more commonly used regarding an unfamiliar stimulus or face.
called in-group advantage; see ingroup
and outgroup
. In-Group advantage means that persons evaluate and judge members of their own group as better and fairer than members of other groups (Out-group disadvantage). The meaning of group can refer to family, teammates on a soccer team, classmates, different races, even all of humanity. The important thing is that the group be defined from something else, e.g. one’s family from another family or the human race from animals. Social psychologists proved in the last 30 years that even the smallest aspect of differentiation, like preference for flavor of ice cream or style of music, can trigger In-Group-Advantage. If the group-building factor is the race of a person, then cross-race effect appears.
The favoritism of in-group members also results from the decreased inborn motivation to read the face of a person of another group or culture. Hess, Senecal & Kirouac showed in 1996 that the motivation to decode the emotional facial expression instantly decreased when the experimental subject realized that the face belonged to a person of another race.
of several studies about emotion recognition in facial expressions revealed that persons could recognize and interpret the emotional facial expression of a person of their own race faster and better than of a person of other races. These findings apply to all races in the same way. Some studies show that other races, compared to one’s own race, have differently shaped faces and different details within a facial expression. This makes it difficult for members of other races to decode emotional expressions. In August 2009, the Journal of Current Biology
reported on experiments showing that, for example, Chinese people do not look at the mouth of a person to determine his emotion. In Western cultures, however, anger and sadness is often displayed via the shape of the mouth. This shows how a person can feel they cannot "read" the faces of other cultures. Inner-brain processes also originally hinder the correct decoding and storage of faces of other races. That is why one often has the feeling that people of other races "all look alike". Over time these perceptional processes change and adapt and the Cross-Race-Effect diminishes.
Another study that supports cross-race identification occurs in inner-brain processes is a study done by Goldinger, He, and Papesh in 2009. Forty Caucasian students from Arizona State University
participated in the study. These participants were presented with fifty-two pictures. There were 26 Caucasian faces and 26 Japanese faces in these pictures. The faces were approximately the same size as real faces when they were displayed on a monitor. The eye movements of the participants were then monitored as they viewed the pictures. A chin rest maintained the participants’ viewing angle, and the path of both eyes was continuously monitored throughout the entirety of the study. This study supported the idea of cross-race effect, since the participants all showed superior identification with the faces of people of the same race.
Results of Elfenbein and Ambady’s meta-analysis from the year 2002 use another term to refer to this perceptual expertise hypothesis and call it "cultural emotional learning". This essentially refers to familiarity in that the more time spent with members of different races, the more familiar one is with different races, and the more cross-race effect is diminished. Important factors of the learning process are the duration and frequency of exposure and the motivation of the trainee. The brain automatically learns to process the information better and more accurately.
Similarly, one may point to the following study by Paul Ekman
, who is nowadays more known for his studies on micro-expressions; see: Microexpression
. Ekman und Friesen observed in 1976 that solely the contact with a foreign race raises the recognition rate of facial expressions. They showed pictures of white Americans to a tribe in New Guinea
. The Americans either smiled, looked sad or angry. The members of the tribe who had been exposed to foreigners before could read the emotions in the American faces much better. This experiment was repeated by Ducci, Arcuri, Georgis and Sineshaw in 1982. This time they went to Ethiopia
and compared the recognition rate of Ethiopians who lived in cities and had contact with a lot of Americans with Ethiopians who lived in remote villages.
Conversely, results of a project funded by the Federal German Ministry of Economies and Technologies - Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Germany)
and the European Social Fund
in 2008, showed that even with e-learning software, the Cross-Race-Effect can be significantly diminished. Additionally, a positive correlation between age and accuracy in recognizing other race faces was also stated in the results. This may be due to the fact that with age comes more exposure and practice identifying the faces of other races.
. Participants were placed in front of a computer and were presented with six target faces of one race, either Caucasian or First Nations. The faces were all viewed for three seconds each. Immediately after the study phase followed a distractor phase in which the participants were told to change “one phrase (family outing) into a related phase (amusement park)”. Results found that even with the distractor phase, there still remained evidence for the cross race effect.
In a study done by Pezdek, Blandon-Gitlin, and Moore and published in the Journal of Applied Psychology
, there were 186 participants (62 kindergarteners, 62 third-graders, and 62 young adults. Half of the participants in each age group were white; half were black, and they were all recruited from similar socioeconomic circumstances. The study consisted of a presentation phase followed by a recognition phase. After the recognition phase the researchers found that same-race identification was more accurate, and the cross-race effect remained consistent throughout the age groups.
. They then conducted a similar assessment as the study previously mentioned in which the participants were asked to identify the emotion portrayed in various faces of these four groups of people. Results showed that each “in-group” was better at detecting emotions of other “in-group” members with the exception of Chinese participants who had been living in the U.S. These participants were better at identifying the faces of non-Asian Americans than Chinese faces. Therefore, familiarity and belonging in an “in-group” can result not only from where people are from, but also by being immersed in a different setting for a short amount of time.
as well as while identifying a suspect in a line-up. When put in these situations, many people feel as if races other than their own look alike and have difficulty distinguishing between various members of different ethnic groups. This effect is also known as the misinformation effect, since the people in this effect are considered to be misinformed about other races, and therefore have difficulty identifying other races. In a study dealing with eyewitnesses testimony, Sheree Josephson of Weber State University
examined forty participants in a racially diverse area of the U.S. They had subjects watch a video of a property crime being committed, then in the next 24 hours came to pick the suspect out of a photo line-up. Most of the participants in the study either misidentified the suspect or stated the suspect was not in the line-up at all. Correct identification of the suspect occurred more often when the eyewitness and the suspect were of the same race.
In one study done by Platz and Hosch, 86 convenience store clerks were asked to identify three customers: one white, one black, and one Mexican American, all of whom stopped in the store earlier that day and made a purchase. The results of the study showed that each of the clerks identified customers belonging to their own race accurately, but when attempting to identify members of the other races, they stated “they all look alike.” Cross-Race Identification Bias shows how prone people are to making false identifications when asked to identity people from a racial or ethnic background other than their own. Similarly, a study found that alcohol intoxication reduces the overall accuracy of other-race bias in face recognition.
Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...
other than their own.
The cross-race effect is scientifically explored in the fields of behavioral biology, human ethology
Human ethology
Ethology is concerned with the evolutionary significance of an animal's behaviors in its natural environment. Broadly speaking, ethology focuses on behavior processes across species rather than focusing on the behaviors of one animal group. Ethology as a discipline is generally thought of as a...
(also called urban ethology), and social psychology
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
. In this neural phenomenon of face recognition, humans perform better when they recognize faces and emotional facial expressions of persons of their own race in comparison to faces and emotional facial expressions of persons of other races. In Social Psychology the cross-race effect is described as the "In-Group Advantage". In other fields, the effect can be seen as a special form of the "In-group advantage", since it is only applied in interracial or inter-ethnic situations, whereas “In-Group Advantage” can refer to mono-ethnic situations as well.
Deeper study of the cross-race effect has also demonstrated two types of processing for the recognition of faces, featural and holistic. It has been found that holistic processing (which occurs beyond individual parts of the face) is more commonly used in same-race situations, but there is an experience effect, which means that as a person gains more experience with those of race he or she will begin to use more holistic processing. Featural processing is much more commonly used regarding an unfamiliar stimulus or face.
Major Theoretical Approaches
History
The first research on the cross-race effect was published in 1914. It stated that humans tend to perceive people of other races than themselves to all look alike. All else being equal, individuals of a given race are distinguishable from each other in proportion to their familiarity, to our contact with the race as a whole. Thus, to the uninitiated White Caucasian, all Asian people look alike, while to Asian people, all White Caucasian people look alike. This does not hold true when people of different races familiarize themselves with races different from their own.In-Group Advantage
Cross-race effect has a strong connection with the phenomenonPhenomenon
A phenomenon , plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as 'appearances' or 'experiences'...
called in-group advantage; see ingroup
Ingroup
In sociology and social psychology, ingroups and outgroups are social groups to which an individual feels as though he or she belongs as a member, or to which they feel contempt, opposition, or a desire to compete. People tend to hold positive attitudes towards members of their own groups, a...
and outgroup
Outgroup
In cladistics or phylogenetics, an outgroup is a group of organisms that serves as a reference group for determination of the evolutionary relationship among three or more monophyletic groups of organisms....
. In-Group advantage means that persons evaluate and judge members of their own group as better and fairer than members of other groups (Out-group disadvantage). The meaning of group can refer to family, teammates on a soccer team, classmates, different races, even all of humanity. The important thing is that the group be defined from something else, e.g. one’s family from another family or the human race from animals. Social psychologists proved in the last 30 years that even the smallest aspect of differentiation, like preference for flavor of ice cream or style of music, can trigger In-Group-Advantage. If the group-building factor is the race of a person, then cross-race effect appears.
The favoritism of in-group members also results from the decreased inborn motivation to read the face of a person of another group or culture. Hess, Senecal & Kirouac showed in 1996 that the motivation to decode the emotional facial expression instantly decreased when the experimental subject realized that the face belonged to a person of another race.
Cross-Race Effect and Emotion Recognition
A meta-analysisMeta-analysis
In statistics, a meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that address a set of related research hypotheses. In its simplest form, this is normally by identification of a common measure of effect size, for which a weighted average might be the output of a meta-analyses. Here the...
of several studies about emotion recognition in facial expressions revealed that persons could recognize and interpret the emotional facial expression of a person of their own race faster and better than of a person of other races. These findings apply to all races in the same way. Some studies show that other races, compared to one’s own race, have differently shaped faces and different details within a facial expression. This makes it difficult for members of other races to decode emotional expressions. In August 2009, the Journal of Current Biology
Current Biology
Current Biology is a scientific journal that covers all areas of biology, especially molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, neurobiology, ecology and evolutionary biology. The journal is published twice a month and includes peer-reviewed research articles, various types of review articles, as...
reported on experiments showing that, for example, Chinese people do not look at the mouth of a person to determine his emotion. In Western cultures, however, anger and sadness is often displayed via the shape of the mouth. This shows how a person can feel they cannot "read" the faces of other cultures. Inner-brain processes also originally hinder the correct decoding and storage of faces of other races. That is why one often has the feeling that people of other races "all look alike". Over time these perceptional processes change and adapt and the Cross-Race-Effect diminishes.
Another study that supports cross-race identification occurs in inner-brain processes is a study done by Goldinger, He, and Papesh in 2009. Forty Caucasian students from Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
participated in the study. These participants were presented with fifty-two pictures. There were 26 Caucasian faces and 26 Japanese faces in these pictures. The faces were approximately the same size as real faces when they were displayed on a monitor. The eye movements of the participants were then monitored as they viewed the pictures. A chin rest maintained the participants’ viewing angle, and the path of both eyes was continuously monitored throughout the entirety of the study. This study supported the idea of cross-race effect, since the participants all showed superior identification with the faces of people of the same race.
Perceptual Expertise Hypothesis
The perceptual expertise hypothesis suggests that people recognize emotions in people of the same race with greater accuracy because individuals tend to gather as friends and spend more time with people of the same race than people of a different race. This is called the perceptual expertise hypothesis. Therefore, with greater exposure comes greater expertise and ability to identify emotions of the people in the same racial group whereas less experience and interaction with people of a different race leads to less expertise in identifying faces. To test out whether this was true, an experiment was conducted in which participants were given much practice identifying emotions in cross race facial expressions. If this hypothesis was supported, that experience increases the accuracy, then the cross race effect should have been eliminated with greater exposure and practice. However, results have shown that practice leads to statistically insignificant gains. This means that perceptual expertise alone cannot be held accountable for the cross race effect.Results of Elfenbein and Ambady’s meta-analysis from the year 2002 use another term to refer to this perceptual expertise hypothesis and call it "cultural emotional learning". This essentially refers to familiarity in that the more time spent with members of different races, the more familiar one is with different races, and the more cross-race effect is diminished. Important factors of the learning process are the duration and frequency of exposure and the motivation of the trainee. The brain automatically learns to process the information better and more accurately.
Similarly, one may point to the following study by Paul Ekman
Paul Ekman
Paul Ekman is a psychologist who has been a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He has been considered one of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century...
, who is nowadays more known for his studies on micro-expressions; see: Microexpression
Microexpression
A microexpression is a brief, involuntary facial expression shown on the face of humans according to emotions experienced. They usually occur in high-stakes situations, where people have something to lose or gain. Unlike regular facial expressions, it is difficult to fake microexpressions...
. Ekman und Friesen observed in 1976 that solely the contact with a foreign race raises the recognition rate of facial expressions. They showed pictures of white Americans to a tribe in New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
. The Americans either smiled, looked sad or angry. The members of the tribe who had been exposed to foreigners before could read the emotions in the American faces much better. This experiment was repeated by Ducci, Arcuri, Georgis and Sineshaw in 1982. This time they went to Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
and compared the recognition rate of Ethiopians who lived in cities and had contact with a lot of Americans with Ethiopians who lived in remote villages.
Conversely, results of a project funded by the Federal German Ministry of Economies and Technologies - Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Germany)
Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Germany)
The Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology is a ministry of the German Federal Government since 1998...
and the European Social Fund
European Social Fund
The European Social Fund is the European Union’s main financial instrument for supporting employment in the Member States as well as promoting economic and social cohesion. ESF spending amounts to around 10% of the EU’s total budget....
in 2008, showed that even with e-learning software, the Cross-Race-Effect can be significantly diminished. Additionally, a positive correlation between age and accuracy in recognizing other race faces was also stated in the results. This may be due to the fact that with age comes more exposure and practice identifying the faces of other races.
Effects of Social Cognition
Another reason cross-race-effect may occur is that our perceptions are often affected by our motivations, expectations, and social cognition. Overall, the creation of norms have shaped and biased even simple perceptions such as line lengths. In terms of our perception of faces, studies have shown that racially ambiguous faces that have been identified as one race or another based on their hairstyle, are identified as having more features of the racial category represented by the hairstyle. Similarly, faces of an ambiguous but equal shade are interpreted as darker or lighter when accompanied by the label of either Black or White, respectively.General Support
A study performed by Arbuthnott, Jackie, Marcon, Meissner, and Pfeifer in 2008 used 29 Caucasian participants and 24 Native American participants. The Caucasian participants were all students from the University of Regina whereas the Native American participants were recruited from Northlands CollegeNorthlands College
Northlands College is a post-secondary educational institution in La Ronge, Saskatchewan, Canada.-Programs:Northlands College offers adult basic education; business and industry; career and support services; computer training; general interest; online training; SIAST & Institute programs...
. Participants were placed in front of a computer and were presented with six target faces of one race, either Caucasian or First Nations. The faces were all viewed for three seconds each. Immediately after the study phase followed a distractor phase in which the participants were told to change “one phrase (family outing) into a related phase (amusement park)”. Results found that even with the distractor phase, there still remained evidence for the cross race effect.
In a study done by Pezdek, Blandon-Gitlin, and Moore and published in the Journal of Applied Psychology
Journal of Applied Psychology
The Journal of Applied Psychology is a publication of the APA.It has a high impact factor for its field. It typically publishes high quality empirical papers.- External links :*...
, there were 186 participants (62 kindergarteners, 62 third-graders, and 62 young adults. Half of the participants in each age group were white; half were black, and they were all recruited from similar socioeconomic circumstances. The study consisted of a presentation phase followed by a recognition phase. After the recognition phase the researchers found that same-race identification was more accurate, and the cross-race effect remained consistent throughout the age groups.
Immersion vs. Upbringing
Another study that provides evidence for the increase in accuracy of emotion recognition for cross-race situations was conducted by Elfenbein and Ambady. Elfenbein and Ambady gathered a group of Non-Asian American participants, Chinese American participants, Chinese participants that have been in America for some time, and Chinese participants living in ChinaChina
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
. They then conducted a similar assessment as the study previously mentioned in which the participants were asked to identify the emotion portrayed in various faces of these four groups of people. Results showed that each “in-group” was better at detecting emotions of other “in-group” members with the exception of Chinese participants who had been living in the U.S. These participants were better at identifying the faces of non-Asian Americans than Chinese faces. Therefore, familiarity and belonging in an “in-group” can result not only from where people are from, but also by being immersed in a different setting for a short amount of time.
Holistic and Featural
In another study by Tanak et al., the researchers tested 21 Caucasian undergraduates and 21 Asian undergraduates both recruited from places deemed primarily Caucasian, holistic and featural methods of processing for recognition. The Caucasian participants demonstrated holistic processing for the recognition of Caucasian faces and featural processing for recognition of unfamiliar Asian faces. Given that participants in this study had extensive exposure to members of their own race, these findings indicate that experience of own-race faces promotes holistic processing. Consistent with the experience claim, Asian participants who had frequent interactions with Caucasian people demonstrated comparable levels of holistic recognition for Caucasian faces as they did for Asian faces. The obtained results are compatible with the account that experience is important for holistic face recognition.Cross-Race Identification Bias
This effect refers to the decreased ability of people of one race to recognize faces and facial expressions of people of another race. This differs from the cross-race bias only because this effect is found mostly in eyewitness situations: during eyewitness identificationEyewitness identification
Eyewitness identification, in criminal law, is evidence received from a witness "who has actually seen an event and can so testify in court"....
as well as while identifying a suspect in a line-up. When put in these situations, many people feel as if races other than their own look alike and have difficulty distinguishing between various members of different ethnic groups. This effect is also known as the misinformation effect, since the people in this effect are considered to be misinformed about other races, and therefore have difficulty identifying other races. In a study dealing with eyewitnesses testimony, Sheree Josephson of Weber State University
Weber State University
Weber State University is a public university located in the city of Ogden in Weber County, Utah, USA. It was founded in 1889 and is a coeducational, publicly supported university offering professional, liberal arts and technical certificates, as well as associate, bachelor's and master's degrees...
examined forty participants in a racially diverse area of the U.S. They had subjects watch a video of a property crime being committed, then in the next 24 hours came to pick the suspect out of a photo line-up. Most of the participants in the study either misidentified the suspect or stated the suspect was not in the line-up at all. Correct identification of the suspect occurred more often when the eyewitness and the suspect were of the same race.
In one study done by Platz and Hosch, 86 convenience store clerks were asked to identify three customers: one white, one black, and one Mexican American, all of whom stopped in the store earlier that day and made a purchase. The results of the study showed that each of the clerks identified customers belonging to their own race accurately, but when attempting to identify members of the other races, they stated “they all look alike.” Cross-Race Identification Bias shows how prone people are to making false identifications when asked to identity people from a racial or ethnic background other than their own. Similarly, a study found that alcohol intoxication reduces the overall accuracy of other-race bias in face recognition.
Economic consequences of Cross-Race Effect
In a globalized world, in which different cultures and races collaborate and negotiate about contracts, licenses, rights and political decisions, one clearly sees the negative impacts of the cross-race effect. Prof. Thomas (Department of Intercultural Communication, Regensburg, Germany) stated that at least 50% of Western-Chinese negotiations fail due to an impaired communication. Even signed contracts lead in 60–70% of the cases to suboptimal results. "Trends in Managing Mobility 2007" analysed that 30% of the failed negotiations can be indirectly traced back to the Cross-Race-Effect. Consequences of the Cross-Race Effect include reduced emotional intelligence, bad evaluation of the trustworthiness, low abilities to communicate, missing empathy and a decreased ability to judge the overall situation of a negotiation.Ways to Reduce Cross-Race Effect
A study was done in which participants were forewarned about cross-race effect and how viewing individuals holistically according to stereotypes does not lead to the correct identification of facial expressions. Instead, participants were encouraged to focus on individual facial features. Interestingly enough, results from this study showed that the cross-race effect could be reduced and sometimes even eliminated when participants were wary of it. Therefore, cross race effect may be a result of people using stereotypes to holistically process faces rather than analytically view individual parts of faces to identify an emotion. This study also shows the effect education may have in helping our society to reduce cross-race effect as a whole. When individuals are more aware of how they may be falling into the trap of stereotyping, they can make accurate judgments about people.Conclusion
There have been many studies to show that the cross-race effect does affect how people perceive the emotions and faces of people of other races. There are negative effects that come from the inaccuracy of identifying faces and emotions of different races; it could lead to embarrassment of those who inaccurately identify and offense and anger to those who are wrongly labeled. Therefore, this is an effect that exists in society that needs to be reduced in order to decreased the negative use of stereotypes. There have been many studies outlining the evidence for the effect, but not many outlining ways to reduce the effect. Therefore, there needs to be more studies in which the cross-race effect can be minimized and eliminated. There also need to be more studies done on whether this effect is purely biological, or more social in order to find if a solution is actually possible. Also, as previously mentioned, opportunities for the education of people about this effect is necessary so that individuals know that this effect exists and will be more cautious when interacting with people of a different racial background.See also
- DiscriminationDiscriminationDiscrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
- Ethnic nepotismEthnic nepotismEthnic nepotism describes a human tendency for in-group bias or in-group favouritism applied by nepotism for people with the same ethnicity.- The theory :...
- Ethnic groupEthnic groupAn ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...
- Face perceptionFace perceptionFace perception is the process by which the brain and mind understand and interpret the face, particularly the human face.The human face's proportions and expressions are important to identify origin, emotional tendencies, health qualities, and some social information. From birth, faces are...
- IngroupIngroupIn sociology and social psychology, ingroups and outgroups are social groups to which an individual feels as though he or she belongs as a member, or to which they feel contempt, opposition, or a desire to compete. People tend to hold positive attitudes towards members of their own groups, a...
- Ingroup biasIngroup biasIn-group–out-group bias, also called intergroup bias, refers to the phenomenon of in-group favoritism, a preference and affinity for one’s in-group over the out-group, or anyone viewed as outside the in-group. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, linking, allocation of resources and many...
- List of cognitive biases
- List of memory biases
- outgroupOutgroupIn cladistics or phylogenetics, an outgroup is a group of organisms that serves as a reference group for determination of the evolutionary relationship among three or more monophyletic groups of organisms....
- Out-group homogeneity bias
- RacialismRacialismRacialism is an emphasis on race or racial considerations. Currently, racialism entails a belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, but not necessarily that any absolute hierarchy between the races has been demonstrated by a rigorous and comprehensive scientific process...
- RacismRacismRacism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
- StereotypeStereotypeA stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
Further reading
- Brigham, J. C., Bennett, L. B., Meissner, C. A., & Mitchell, T. L. (2006). The influence of race on eyewitness memory. In R. Lindsay, D. Ross, J. Read, & M. Toglia, (Eds). Handbook of Eyewitness Psychology: Memory for People, (pp. 257–281). Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates.
- Marcon, J. L., Meissner, C. A., & Malpass, R. S. (in press). Cross-race effect in eyewitness identification. In B. Cutler’s (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Psychology & Law. Sage Publications
- Meissner, C. A., & Brigham, J. C. (2001). Thirty years of investigating the own-race bias in memory for faces: A meta-analytic review. Psychology, Public Policy, & Law, 7, 3-35.
- Sporer, S. L. (2001). Recognizing faces of other ethnic groups: An integration of theories. Psychology, Public Policy, & Law, 7, 36-97.