The Role of Experience and Contact in the Recognition of Faces Of Own- and Other-Race Persons

Failing to recognize someone or misidentifying someone can have important personal and social consequences. The perceiver may suffer feelings of embarrassment or stupidity. The target may feel insulted, stereotyped, or in extreme cases may be falsely identified as a criminal. If the perceiver and the target are of different ethnic groups, misidentification can increase intergroup hostility, stereotyping, and intergroup anxiety. Laboratory and field research demonstrates an own‐race bias in recognition accuracy. People are better able to identify members of their own race than members of another race. The significance of own‐race bias in the criminal justice system and intergroup contact situations is reviewed, and cognitive and motivational correlates of own‐race bias are discussed. Four possible explanations for this differential recognition effect are presented. The explanation derived from intergroup contact theory—that differential recognition stems from limited experience with members of other groups—has received surprisingly weak research support thus far, Greater attention to assessing different types of contact may increase our understanding of the ways in which intergroup contact can affect intergroup perceptions.