Within-race and between-race recognition of transformed and untransformed faces

Numerous studies have shown that people from one racial group experience difficulties in remembering the faces of people from other racial groups. Two experiments are reported that explore the phenomenon more fully by examining subjects' ability to recognize faces transformed slightly in pose between study and test. Published work shows that white subjects can recognize such transformed white faces as well as they identify untransformed faces. In the first experiment, it was shown that white subjects were unable to recognize transformed black faces. The second experiment, following the pilot study, investigated recognition of both black and white, transformed and untransformed faces by Europeans and Africans. This study revealed that people from one racial group are particularly disadvantaged in recognizing other-race faces that have undergone transformation. The results are discussed in relation to learning approaches to face memory.