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Recognition and context memory for faces from own and other ethnic groups: a remember-know investigation
Ruth Horry1, Daniel B Wright, Colin G Tredoux
1University of Sussex, Brighton, England. ruth.horry@rhul.ac.uk
Memory & Cognition
|February 23, 2010
Summary
People are better at recognizing faces from their own ethnic group. This study found that own-ethnicity faces are recognized more accurately than other-ethnicity faces, impacting eyewitness memory.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- The other-ethnicity effect (OEE) describes a deficit in recognizing faces from different ethnic groups.
- This effect may stem from impaired recollective memory for non-native faces.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of recollective memory in the other-ethnicity effect.
- To examine how ethnic group affects face recognition accuracy and memory processes.
Main Methods:
- White and Black participants viewed faces from their own and other ethnic groups within various contexts.
- An old/new recognition task was administered, followed by remember-know-guess and context judgments.
Main Results:
- Own-ethnicity faces were recognized with higher accuracy compared to other-ethnicity faces.
- Participants provided more 'remember' responses and more accurate context judgments for own-ethnicity faces.
- Evidence suggests a deficit in recollective memory contributes to the OEE.
Conclusions:
- The other-ethnicity effect is influenced by differential memory processes for own- versus other-ethnicity faces.
- Findings have significant implications for the reliability of eyewitness memory, particularly in cross-ethnic identification scenarios.
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