Eye-tracking the own-race bias in face recognition: Revealing the perceptual and socio-cognitive mechanisms

• Published in: Cognition Vol. 129; no. 3; pp. 586 - 597
• Main Authors: Hills, Peter J., Pake, J. Michael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.12.2013; Elsevier
• Subjects: Activity levels. Psychomotricity; Adult; African Continental Ancestry Group - psychology; Attention - physiology; Attentional cueing; Bias; Biological and medical sciences; Continental Population Groups - psychology; Cross-race effect; Cues; Ethnicity; European Continental Ancestry Group - psychology; Eye Movement Measurements; Eye Movements - physiology; Eye-movements; Face; Face recognition; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Male; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology; Perception; Physical appearance; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Recognition (Psychology) - physiology; Sight; Signal Detection, Psychological - physiology; Social cognition; Social Perception; The own-race bias; Vigilance. Attention. Sleep; Young Adult; Cross-race effect; Eye-movements; The own-race bias; Face recognition; Attentional cueing; Human; Cognition; Eye movement; Social cognition; Vision; Race; Perception; Face; Visual attention; Recognition; Cognitive bias
• ISSN: 0010-0277; 1873-7838
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.08.012

•There are observer race differences when scanning both own- and other-race faces.•White Ps scan eyes and Black Ps scan the nose indicating physiognomic diagnosticity.•Cueing the most diagnostic features of other-race faces removes the own-race bias.•This effect was removed with response delayed; affecting the first fixation only.•The own-race bias is partially caused by misallocation of attention. Own-race faces are recognised more accurately than other-race faces and may even be viewed differently as measured by an eye-tracker (Goldinger, Papesh, & He, 2009). Alternatively, observer race might direct eye-movements (Blais, Jack, Scheepers, Fiset, & Caldara, 2008). Observer differences in eye-movements are likely to be based on experience of the physiognomic characteristics that are differentially discriminating for Black and White faces. Two experiments are reported that employed standard old/new recognition paradigms in which Black and White observers viewed Black and White faces with their eye-movements recorded. Experiment 1 showed that there were observer race differences in terms of the features scanned but observers employed the same strategy across different types of faces. Experiment 2 demonstrated that other-race faces could be recognised more accurately if participants had their first fixation directed to more diagnostic features using fixation crosses. These results are entirely consistent with those presented by Blais et al. (2008) and with the perceptual interpretation that the own-race bias is due to inappropriate attention allocated to the facial features (Hills & Lewis, 2006, 2011).