Individuation Motivation and Face Experience Can Operate Jointly to Produce the Own-Race Bias

Abstract

The own-race bias (ORB) is the tendency for perceivers to better recognize own-race than cross-race (CR) faces. Perceptual approaches to understanding this effect suggest that perceivers typically have low levels of processing experience with CR faces, resulting in poor recognition memory. However, social–cognitive models have demonstrated that perceiver motivation can also influence CR recognition accuracy. The current work bridges these two literatures by exploring how participants' CR experience might facilitate the ability to recognize CR faces when combined with perceiver motivation. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that motivation translates into superior CR recognition only for perceivers who have relatively extensive prior experience with individuating CR faces. In Experiment 2, we find that a lack of experience with CR faces can be overcome in situations where perceivers are highly motivated to individuate CR faces.