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Quick Overview

They All Look the Same to Me (But Not When They Are Angry) Mark Schaller University of British Columbia. Quick Overview. Background on the outgroup homogeneity bias in recognition memory. What it is. Why it happens. Implications for its disappearance.

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Quick Overview

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  1. They All Look the Same to Me (But Not When They Are Angry)Mark SchallerUniversity of British Columbia

  2. Quick Overview • Background on the outgroup homogeneity bias in recognition memory. • What it is. • Why it happens. • Implications for its disappearance. • Experiment testing novel hypothesis about a specific set of circumstances under which the bias disappears. • And sometimes even reverses. • Implications.

  3. Outgroup Homogeneity Bias in Recognition Memory • The “They all look the same to me” effect. • Recognition memory for faces of ethnic ingroup members is reasonably accurate. • High accuracy in distinguishing previously-seen faces from faces encountered for the first time. • But recognition memory for faces of outgroup members is typically much worse. • Much greater tendency for people to mistakenly believe that they’ve previously seen a particular outgroup member when, in fact, they haven’t.

  4. A Robust and Important Effect • A classic, highly-replicable finding. • Chance & Goldstein (1996): “Few psychological findings are so easy to duplicate.” • Many real-life implications • Eyewitness testimony, etc.

  5. Why Does This Bias Occur:A Functional Perspective • Recognition requires allocation of attention and encoding resources to distinctive facial features. • These cognitive resources are costly. • These cognitive resources are allocated selectively to individuals with greater relevance to perceivers’ own future outcomes. • Future outcomes influenced more by ingroup members than by outgroup members.

  6. Ingroup  “Relevant”  Encode  Accurate Member Features Recognition Outgroup  “Irrelevant”  Minimal  Poor Member Encoding Recognition

  7. Impact of Facial Expression? • In prior studies, faces were affectively neutral. • What if faces are angry?

  8. Impact of Facial Expression? • Angry facial expression connotes: • Clear implications for own outcomes. • High utility of encoding individuating features. • Implies: disappearance of usual memory bias. • The encoding of individuating features is perhaps especially functional if the angry face is attached to an outgroup member. • Fewer “brakes” on intergroup violence. • Implies: possible reversal of usual memory bias.

  9. Ingroup  “Relevant”  Encode  Accurate Member Features Recognition Outgroup  “Relevant!”  Encode  Accurate Member Features! Recognition!

  10. An Experimental Test(Ackerman et al., 2006; Psychological Science) • Participants: 192 White university students. • Stimuli: 16 male faces. • 4 Neutral White; 4 Neutral Black. • 4 Angry White; 4 Angry Black. • Recognition memory • 16 old faces, 16 new faces. • Signal-detection measure of recognition accuracy (A’).

  11. Recognition Accuracy for Faces

  12. Additional Methods and Results • Two additional manipulations: • Actual presentation time (½ sec., 1 sec., 4 sec.) • Distracter image either present or absent when each target face originally presented. • Were ample cognitive resources necessary for increased accuracy in recognizing angry Black faces? • No; the opposite was true: • Reversal of usual bias occurred most strongly under conditions of least processing time (1/2 sec. presentation time coupled with distraction). • Implies highly efficient encoding of individuating features of angry outgroup faces.

  13. Implications & Future Directions • Immediate questions for future research: • Does this effect hold with other ethnic ingroup / outgroup categories? • Is this effect specific to angry facial expressions? • Broader implications: • A more nuanced perspective on the so-called outgroup homogeneity bias. • Implications for eyewitness identification? • Utility of functional perspective on social cognition.

  14. Thank You Collaborators: Josh Ackerman, Vaughn Becker, Vladas Griskevicius, Doug Kenrick, Jon Maner, Steve Neuberg, Jenessa Shapiro Funding: United States National Institutes of Health For more information about the research itself: Ackerman, J. M., Shapiro, J. R., Neuberg, S. L., Kenrick, D. T., Becker, D. V., Griskevicius, V., Maner, J. K., & Schaller, M.  (2006). They all look the same to me (unless they’re angry): From out-group homogeneity to out-group heterogeneity. Psychological Science, 17, 836-840.

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