Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 20, 2025

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
Published on: July 31, 2016
The other-race effect in facial expression processing: Behavioral and ERP evidence from a balanced cross-cultural
Zhongqing Jiang1, Guillermo Recio2, Wenhui Li3
1College of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China.
Abstract:
Although evidence for cultural variants in facial expression decoding is accumulating, the other-race effect in facial expression processing and its neural correlates are still unclear. We investigated this question with a fully balanced design, in which a group of East Asian and a group of European Caucasian women categorized pictures of sad, happy, angry, and neutral facial expressions posed by individuals of their own-race and the other-race. Results revealed a disadvantage in categorizing expressions of anger in other-race faces in both samples, and for sad expressions in the European sample only. Partially consistent, East Asian participants showed longer latency of the N170 component in the event-related potential (ERP) and European Caucasian participants showed larger N170 amplitudes to other-race faces. The late positive complex in the ERP was less distinguishable among other-race facial expressions. Therefore, the present study observed an other-race effect in early and late stages of face processing, reflecting less efficient structural encoding and less elaborate processing for other-race than own-race faces.
Related Concept Videos
Facial Feedback Hypothesis
Emotional Expression
Universal Facial Expressions
Psychologist Paul Ekman identified seven basic...
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Stereotype Content Model
Surveys

