Determinants of the Own-Race Bias and neural correlates of own- and other-race face processing
Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Abstract: When interacting with other people, recognizing faces of different individuals is of tremendous importance for our daily lives. However, people are generally better in recognizing own-race faces as compared to other-race faces. This discrepancy, also known as own-race bias, is most likely due to lifelong experiences with faces, which in turn may exert an affect on the accuracy of encoding individual differences in faces. The present thesis was aimed at analyzing the influence of several factors on the own-race bias and investigating the extent to which expertise, different learning tasks and intensive recognition training may affect the own-race bias. To this end, behavioural measures of the own-race bias and ERP correlates of face processing were recorded and analysed over the course of several experiments. The findings from these experiments suggest that the own-race bias may be a very stable phenomenon, a reduction of which was achieved by long-term expertise with other-race individuals. In contrast to behavioural findings, analyses of neural correlates of face processing showed ethnicity-dependent differences in very early ERP components, with generally enhanced N170 amplitudes to other-race faces over all experiments. On the contrary, ethnicity-dependent modulations of the subsequent P2 compoment varied across studies. Whereas expertise with other-race faces elicited generally greater P2 amplitudes to own-race faces over the left hemisphere, recognition training and a variation of the learning task brought about similar effects over the right hemisphere. The latter two factors did, however, not affect the behavioural own-race bias – a finding that is in stark contrast to a significantly decreased own-race bias in experts for other-race faces. These findings are therefore in line with theories that emphasize the role of perceptual expertise on the own-race bias and advocate intensive other-race contact as a critical factor in decreasing the own-race bias.
Author: Johanna Stahl
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2440469489