Cross-race effect

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The cross-race effect (also referred to as the own-race bias or other-race effect) is a facial recognition phenomenon in which individuals show superior performance in identifying faces of their own race when compared with memory for faces of another, less familiar race. Over three decades of research on the cross-race effect (CRE) suggests a rather robust phenomenon that carries practical implications for cases of mistaken eyewitness identification, particularly in situations that involve a poor opportunity to encode other-race faces and when a significant amount of time occurs between observation of the perpetrator and a test of the witness’s memory. While the CRE has not generally been observed in the accuracy of descriptions for own-race vs. other-race faces, research has found that individuals often attend to facial features that are diagnostic for own-race faces and misapply these feature sets when attempting to identify and describe other-race faces. As such, theorists have proposed that encoding and representational processes are largely responsible for the CRE, including the role of interracial contact and perceptual categorization processes. (Marcon et al., Encyclopedia of Psychology & Law)

[edit] References

  • 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.
  • 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.
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