The effects of Perceiver Motivation and Visual Attention Training on Reduction of Cross Race Facial Recognition Bias (2012 - Present)

Investigator:  Thomas Malloy, Rhode Island College

Abstract:  A basic finding in social psychology is that people have superior recognition memory for the faces of members of the racial group they belong to (i.e., the in-group) compared to faces of members of a racial group they do not belong to (i.e., the out-group). This is termed the Cross Race Effect (CRE). The cross race effect is of basic theoretical interest as a social psychological phenomenon, and also has important implications for human health and welfare. An experiment is proposed to isolate the effect to two variables (perceiver motivation to attend to the facial features of out-group members and visual attention training to detect the unique facial features of out-group members) that are expected to reduce the CRE. Reduction of the CRE has important applied implications for intergroup interactions in health care, education, industry, and criminal justice. As an example, imagine the case where a White physician fails to recognize a Black patient, or confuses one Black patient with another. Were this to occur, there is an increased likelihood of clinical error, patient dissatisfaction, failure to comply with a medical regimen, disengagement from health care and adverse health consequences. Perceiver motivation to attend to the facial features of out-group members will be increased and visual attention training will be provided so that in-group members attend to and detect the unique facial features of out-group members. Relative to subjects in the control conditions, the CRE should be reduced. Eye-tracking technology will be used to directly observe visual attention to faces of in-group and out-group members when taking in information about the face (i.e., encoding) and while attempting to recognize faces that one has been exposed to previously (i.e., recognition) when embedded with faces that one has not seen previously. This experiment can reveal if methods designed to reduce the CRE have their effect during visual processing of a person's face during encoding, retrieval, or at both phases of facial processing.