Intergroup Face Perception

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As the fields of social cognition and neuroscience advance, greater interest has developed in the intersection of these disciplines: social cognitive neuroscience (SCN). The social cognitive neuroscience approach aims to describe behavior at three levels of analysis: the social level (the phenomenon as experienced by the participant), the cognitive level (an information-processing description of the processes that give rise to the participant’s experiences), and the neural level (the description of the neural systems involved in the cognitive processes hypothesized to underlie the social phenomenon) [1]. This cross-level approach can improve our understanding of social, cognitive, and neural phenomenon.

The SCN perspective has been useful in explaining the processes in intergroup relations and person perception generally, and in particular, the question of how individuals process faces from their own and other racial groups. This wiki examines the present research and future directions of a SCN approach to intergroup person perception.


Introduction

“Thus, to the uninitiated American all Asiatics look alike, while to the Asiatics, all White men look alike.”
Harvard Psychologist Gustave Feingold, 1914[2]

The idea that members of one’s own race are easily differentiated from each other, while members of other groups “all look alike” and are easily confused is a common lay belief. Research on recognition memory for same and other-race faces consistently demonstrates a Cross-Race Effect: participants have higher hit rates and lower false alarm rates for own-race faces, an effect that replicates across groups and experimental designs [3][4] .

What cognitive processes account for this effect? Some advocate a perceptual expertise account: greater contact with members of one’s own race leads participants to become “experts” in attending to differentiating information. There is some evidence that intergroup contact reduces the CRE[5] , but several studies have failed to replicate this effect [6]. Others argue for a motivational account: ingroup members are seen as more motivationally-relevant or important, leading participants to attend more to them. Evidence for this position come from situations when the CRE can be reversed: when other-race faces display cues signaling threat[7] (angry facial expression) or power[8] (status labels during presentation).

Race and the FFA: Evidence for perceptual expertise

Figure 1. Results from Golby et al., 2001

The first pass at understanding the neural substrates of race-differentiated face processing identified the Fusiform Face Area (FFA) as an ROI, since this area is critical for the recognition and correct identification of faces[9] . Golby and colleagues (2001)[10] presented participants with pictures of Black and White targets in an intentional encoding paradigm. Both Black and White participants experienced greater FFA activation for same-race relative to other-race faces. Furthermore, activation in the left fusiform cortex predicted memory for outgroup faces: the greater the activation for own-race versus other-race faces, the greater the cross-race effect.

Converging evidence from a repetition suppression paradigm found greater adaption to own-race than other-race faces in N170, an ERP component sensitive to the encoding of faces [11]. Differential activation in N170 for own and other-race faces is moderated by social contact with members of other races, lending support to the social contact aspect of the expertise argument [12]. The recruitment of the FFA is consistent with an expertise-based account, as activation in this area has been linked to higher levels of exposure to various stimuli (e.g. birds among birdwatchers, novel “Greebles” after training) [13].

Beyond expertise?

Other observed effects are less plausible under an expertise explanation. For example, Whites show greater FFA activation for own versus other-race faces with “scrambled” facial features- faces Whites would be equally unlikely to encounter for either race [14]. Additionally, if the expertise hypothesis were true, we would expect that, since Blacks generally have more interracial contact with Whites than Whites have with Blacks, Blacks would show less of an own-race effect in the FFA; however, this is not the case[10]. Ultimately these are weak arguments against the expertise hypothesis, as one could argue that Whites still have more experience with White faces (regardless of features) than Black faces. Additionally, imaging studies with Black and White participants have not found group differences in intergroup contact.

Motivation and race perception

Figure 1. Correlation between FFA activity and ingroup memory bias from Van Bavel et al., 2011

A more convincing argument against the expertise theory comes from studies that have modulated the own-race preference effect in the FFA. In behavioral studies, having participants construe groups in ways other than race (e.g. having multi-racial teams) replaced the CRE with a cross-group memory bias . Is such moderation found at the neural level? To test this hypothesis, Van Bavel and colleagues presented participants Black and White faces that were assigned to an arbitrary, mixed-race ingroup or outgroup (the Leopards or the Tigers) [16]. Participants sorted targets into these teams and were then given a surprise recognition task. The FFA was not sensitive to target race but to group membership, showing preferential activation for ingroup members; furthermore, this difference FFA activation predicted differences in memory for ingroup versus outgroup members.

Subsequent SCN research has found convergent evidence that motivation can tune neural responses to group faces using ERP. Approach (pulling faces towards the self with a joystick) and avoidance (pushing faces away from the self) modulate bias to White faces in P100 as soon as 100ms after a face is presented (marginal effects for N170 were obtained, but were rendered nonsignificant controlling for P100 activation)[17]. These first steps show that a cross-race effect, while prevalent, is not a given: construal can modulate early perceptual processes.

Conclusion and future directions

Together, these studies demonstrate the utility of a SCN approach to own-race biases in memory and pave the way for new directions in intergroup perception. For example, while Van Bavel and colleagues’ findings demonstrate that different construals of social groups and active motives can shape eatly perceptions of group members, it could be that expertise guides perception in the absence of strong top-down goals.

One way to test this hypothesis would be to increase cognitive load while manipulating minimal group membership: either participants would “default” to the CRE, or they would show a stronger own group effect. A second area of theoretical expansion is in exploring a wider range of motives in modulating FFA activity: motives from self-protection[18] to resource preservation[19] have been shown to influence behavioral categorization of faces. Do they influence early FFA activation or late judgments? Future research can help us understand the constitution of social, cognitive, and neural levels of intergroup perception.

References

  1. Ochsner K. (2007). Social cognitive neuroscience: Historical development, core principles, and future promise. In Kruglanksi A., Higgins E.T. (Eds.) Social Psychology: A Handbook of Basic Principles (2nd ed., pp. 39–66). New York: Guilford.
  2. Feingold CA. The influence of the environment on identification of persons and things. J Crim Law Police Sci 1914;5:39–51
  3. 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, and Law, 7(1), 3.
  4. Chance, J. E., & Goldstein, A. G. (1996). The other-race effect and eyewitness identification.
  5. Rhodes, G., Brake, S., Taylor, K., & Tan, S. (1989). Expertise and configural coding in face recognition. British Journal of Psychology, 80(3), 313-331.
  6. Buckhout, R., & Regan, S. (1988). Explorations in research on the other-race effect in face recognition.
  7. Ackerman, J. M., Shapiro, J. R., Neuberg, S. L., Kenrick, D. T., Becker, D. V., Griskevicius, V., ... & Schaller, M. (2006). They All Look the Same to Me (Unless They're Angry) From Out-Group Homogeneity to Out-Group Heterogeneity. Psychological Science, 17(10), 836-840.
  8. Shriver, E. R., & Hugenberg, K. (2010). Power, individuation, and the cross-race recognition deficit. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(5), 767-774.
  9. Grill-Spector, K., Knouf, N., & Kanwisher, N. (2004). The fusiform face area subserves face perception, not generic within-category identification. Nature neuroscience, 7(5), 555-562.
  10. Golby, A. J., Gabrieli, J. D., Chiao, J. Y., & Eberhardt, J. L. (2001). Differential responses in the fusiform region to same-race and other-race faces. Nature neuroscience, 4(8), 845-850.
  11. Vizioli, L., Rousselet, G. A., & Caldara, R. (2010). Neural repetition suppression to identity is abolished by other-race faces. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(46), 20081-20086.
  12. Walker, P. M., Silvert, L., Hewstone, M., & Nobre, A. C. (2008). Social contact and other-race face processing in the human brain. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 3(1), 16-25.
  13. Tarr, M. J., & Gauthier, I. (2000). FFA: a flexible fusiform area for subordinate-level visual processing automatized by expertise. Nature neuroscience, 3, 764-770.
  14. Golarai, G., Ghahremani, D. G., Eberhardt, J. L., Grill-Spector, K., & Gabrieli, G. D. (2004). Representation of parts and canonical face configuration in the amygdala, superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the fusiform “face area”(FFA).Journal of Vision, 4(8), 131-131.
  15. Van Bavel, J. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2012). A Social Identity Approach to Person Memory Group Membership, Collective Identification, and Social Role Shape Attention and Memory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,38(12), 1566-1578.
  16. Van Bavel, J. J., Packer, D. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2011). Modulation of the fusiform face area following minimal exposure to motivationally relevant faces: evidence of in-group enhancement (not out-group disregard). Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(11), 3343-3354.
  17. Cunningham, W. A., Van Bavel, J. J., Arbuckle, N. L., Packer, D. J., & Waggoner, A. S. (2012). Rapid social perception is flexible: approach and avoidance motivational states shape P100 responses to other-race faces.Frontiers in human neuroscience, 6.
  18. Miller, S. L., Maner, J. K., & Vaughn Becker, D. (2010). Self-Protective Biases in Group Categorization: Threat Cues Shape the Psychological Boundary Between" Us" and" Them". Journal of personality and social psychology, 99(1), 62.
  19. Rodeheffer, C. D., Hill, S. E., & Lord, C. G. (2012). Does this recession make me look black? The effect of resource scarcity on the categorization of biracial faces. Psychological science, 23(12), 1476.
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