Narrowing in categorical responding to other‐race face classes by infants

Infants can form object categories based on perceptual cues, but their ability to form categories based on differential experience is less clear. Here we examined whether infants filter through perceptual differences among faces from different other‐race classes and represent them as a single other‐race class different only from own‐race faces. We used a familiarization/novelty‐preference procedure to investigate category formation for two other‐race face classes (Black vs. Asian) by White 6‐ and 9‐month‐olds. The data indicated that while White 6‐month‐olds categorically represented the distinction between Black and Asian faces, White 9‐month‐olds formed a broad other‐race category inclusive of Black and Asian faces, but exclusive of own‐race White faces. The findings provide evidence that narrowing can occur for mental processes other than discrimination: category formation is also affected. The results suggest that frequency of experience with own‐race versus other‐race classes of faces may propel infants to contrast own‐race faces with other‐race faces, but not different classes of other‐race faces with each other.     

Categorising intersectional targets: An “either/and” approach to race- and gender-emotion congruity

Research on the interaction of emotional expressions with social category cues in face processing has focused on whether specific emotions are associated with single-category identities, thus overlooking the influence of intersectional identities. Instead, we examined how quickly people categorise intersectional targets by their race, gender, or emotional expression. In Experiment 1, participants categorised Black and White faces displaying angry, happy, or neutral expressions by either race or gender. Emotion influenced responses to men versus women only when gender was made salient by the task. Similarly, emotion influenced responses to Black versus White targets only when participants categorised by race. In Experiment 2, participants categorised faces by emotion so that neither category was more salient. As predicted, responses to Black women differed from those to both Black men and White women. Thus, examining race and gender separately is insufficient to understanding how emotion and social category cues are processed.     

Beyond the double-jeopardy hypothesis: Assessing emotion on the faces of multiply-categorizable targets of prejudice

Prior research has shown that race influences perceptions of facial expressions, with hostility detected earlier on young male Black than White faces. This study examined whether the interplay of race and age would moderate perceptions of hostility by having participants evaluate facial expressions of multiply-categorizable targets. Using a facial emotion change-detection task, we assessed evaluations of onset/offset of anger and happiness on faces of young and old Black and White men. Significant age by race interactions were observed: while participants perceived anger as lasting longer and appearing sooner on old compared to young White faces, this relationship was reversed for Black faces, with participants perceiving anger lasting longer and appearing sooner on young compared to old Black faces. Similar results were found for perceived happiness. These results suggest that perception during cross-categorization may be more complex than the simple additive function proposed by the double-jeopardy hypothesis, such that co-activation of other stereotypes may sometimes confer a protective benefit against bias.     

He throws like a girl (but only when he's sad): emotion affects sex-decoding of biological motion displays

Gender stereotypes have been implicated in sex-typed perceptions of facial emotion. Such interpretations were recently called into question because facial cues of emotion are confounded with sexually dimorphic facial cues. Here we examine the role of visual cues and gender stereotypes in perceptions of biological motion displays, thus overcoming the morphological confounding inherent in facial displays. In four studies, participants’ judgments revealed gender stereotyping. Observers accurately perceived emotion from biological motion displays (Study 1), and this affected sex categorizations. Angry displays were overwhelmingly judged to be men; sad displays were judged to be women (Studies 2–4). Moreover, this pattern remained strong when stimuli were equated for velocity (Study 3). We argue that these results were obtained because perceivers applied gender stereotypes of emotion to infer sex category (Study 4). Implications for both vision sciences and social psychology are discussed.     

Impressions at the intersection of ambiguous and obvious social categories: Does gay + Black = likable?

How do perceivers combine information about perceptually obvious categories (e.g., Black) with information about perceptually ambiguous categories (e.g., gay) during impression formation? Given that gay stereotypes are activated automatically, we predicted that positive gay stereotypes confer evaluative benefits to Black gay targets, even when perceivers are unaware of targets' sexual orientations. Participants in Study 1 rated faces of White straight men as more likable than White gay men, but rated Black men in the opposite manner: gays were liked more than straights. In Study 2, participants approaching Whites during an approach–avoidance task responded faster to straights than gays, whereas participants approaching Blacks responded faster to gays than straights. These findings highlight the striking extent to which less visible categories, like sexual orientation, subtly influence person perception and determine the explicit and implicit evaluations individuals form about others.     

Line‐up Misidentifications: When Being ‘Prototypically Black’ is Perceived as Criminal

Eyewitness misidentifications are the leading factor contributing to wrongful convictions. Black men, more than any other racial group, are disproportionately affected by this, thus elevating the importance of identifying factors that contribute to the false recollection of unseen faces. In the current studies, we tested whether misplaced familiarity and subsequent misidentification of Black faces was underpinned by the degree to which target faces were considered ‘prototypical’ (i.e., representative) of the Black race category. First, results revealed that Black faces with stereotypical facial features were accurately categorized as ‘Black’ quicker than faces with nonstereotypical features (Experiment 1). Moreover, identification errors were higher for both face recognition (Experiment 2) and line‐up identification (Experiment3) for stereotypical‐featured than nonstereotypical‐featured faces. Overall, results suggest that stereotypical Black faces are representative of the category ‘Black’ and facilitated feelings of familiarity and the endorsement of memory errors that may underpin eyewitness misidentifications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Opposite aftereffects for Chinese and Caucasian faces are selective for social category information and not just physical face differences

Opposite changes in perception (aftereffects) can be simultaneously induced for faces from different social categories—for example, Chinese and Caucasian faces. We investigated whether these aftereffects are generated in high-level face coding that is sensitive to the social category information in faces, or in earlier visual coding sensitive to simple physical differences between faces. We caricatured the race of face stimuli and created face continua ranging from caricatured Caucasian faces (SuperCaucasian) to caricatured Chinese faces (SuperChinese). Participants were adapted to oppositely distorted faces that were a fixed physical distance apart on the morph continua. Larger opposite aftereffects were found following adaptation to faces from different race categories (e.g., contracted Chinese and expanded Caucasian faces), than for faces that were the same physical distance apart on the morph continua, but were within a race category (e.g., contracted SuperChinese and expanded Chinese faces). These results suggest that opposite aftereffects for Chinese and Caucasian faces reflect the recalibration of face neurons tuned to high-level social category information.     

Afraid of one afraid of all: When threat associations spread across face-types

Fear can be acquired for objects not inherently associated with threat (e.g. birds), and this threat may generalize from prototypical to peripheral category members (e.g. crows vs. penguins). When categorizing people, pervasive stereotypes link Black men to assumed violence and criminality. Faces with Afrocentric features (prototypical) are more often associated with threat and criminality than non-Afrocentric (peripheral) faces regardless of whether the individual is Black or White. In this study, using a priming paradigm, threat associations related to negative racial stereotypes were tested as a vehicle for spreading fear across face-type categories. Results showed more negative than positive judgments for White face targets but only when the prime was primarily non-Afrocentric (i.e. Eurocentric). Black face targets were judged more negatively than positively regardless of prime. This suggests some cognitive processes related to threat generalizations of objects extend to complex social categories.     

Continuous dynamics in the real-time perception of race

Although the outcomes of race categorization have been studied in detail, the temporal dynamics of real-time processing of race remain elusive. We measured participants’ hand movements en route to one of two race-category alternatives by recording the streaming x, y coordinates of the computer mouse. Study 1 showed that, when categorizing White and Black computer-generated faces that featurally overlapped with the opposite race, mouse trajectories showed a continuous spatial attraction toward the opposite category. Moreover, these race-atypical White and Black targets induced spatial attraction effects that had different temporal signatures. Study 2 showed that, when categorizing real faces that varied along a continuum of racial ambiguity, graded increases in ambiguity led to corresponding increases in trajectories’ attraction to the opposite category and trajectories’ movement complexity. These studies provide evidence for temporally dynamic competition across perceptions of race, where simultaneously and partially-active race categories continuously evolve into single categorical outcomes over time. Moreover, the findings show how different social category cues may exert different dynamic patterns of influence over the real-time processing that culminates in categorizations of others.     

The influence of social category cues on the happy categorisation advantage depends on expression valence

Facial race and sex cues can influence the magnitude of the happy categorisation advantage. It has been proposed that implicit race or sex based evaluations drive this influence. Within this account a uniform influence of social category cues on the happy categorisation advantage should be observed for all negative expressions. Support has been shown with angry and sad expressions but evidence to the contrary has been found for fearful expressions. To determine the generality of the evaluative congruence account, participants categorised happiness with either sadness, fear, or surprise displayed on White male as well as White female, Black male, or Black female faces across three experiments. Faster categorisation of happy than negative expressions was observed for female faces when presented among White male faces, and for White male faces when presented among Black male faces. These results support the evaluative congruence account when both positive and negative expressions are presented.     

Opposite aftereffects for Chinese and Caucasian faces are selective for social category information and not just physical face differences

Opposite changes in perception (aftereffects) can be simultaneously induced for faces from different social categories—for example, Chinese and Caucasian faces. We investigated whether these aftereffects are generated in high-level face coding that is sensitive to the social category information in faces, or in earlier visual coding sensitive to simple physical differences between faces. We caricatured the race of face stimuli and created face continua ranging from caricatured Caucasian faces (SuperCaucasian) to caricatured Chinese faces (SuperChinese). Participants were adapted to oppositely distorted faces that were a fixed physical distance apart on the morph continua. Larger opposite aftereffects were found following adaptation to faces from different race categories (e.g., contracted Chinese and expanded Caucasian faces), than for faces that were the same physical distance apart on the morph continua, but were within a race category (e.g., contracted SuperChinese and expanded Chinese faces). These results suggest that opposite aftereffects for Chinese and Caucasian faces reflect the recalibration of face neurons tuned to high-level social category information.     

Reading Representations of Black, East Asian, and White Women in Magazines for Adolescent Girls

Beginning in the 1970s, there has been a growing body of literature on the depictions of women in advertisements. However, the intersection of race and gender in advertising has rarely been explored. This study was designed to compare how White, Black, and East Asian women were portrayed in advertisements found in fashion magazines directed at adolescent girls. A correlation was found between race and the type of product advertised. Black women were prominent in clothing advertisements, and East Asian women were prominent in advertisements for technology products. A correlation was also found between race and the importance of the model in the advertisement. The results of this study illustrate that older stereotypes may still exist (White beauty ideal, hypersexual Black women), and some new stereotypes are being formed (technologically savvy East Asians).     

Face aftereffects suggest interdependent processing of expression and sex and of expression and race

Bruce and Young (1986) proposed that functionally different aspects of faces (e.g., sex, identity, and expression) are processed independently. Although interdependent processing of identity and expression and of identity and sex have been demonstrated previously, evidence for interdependent processing of sex and expression is equivocal. Using a visual adaptation paradigm, we show that expression aftereffects can be simultaneously induced in different directions along anger–fear continua for male and female faces (Experiment 1) and for East Asian and Black African faces (Experiment 2). These findings for sex- and race-contingent expression aftereffects suggest that processing of expression is interdependent with processing of sex and race and are therefore problematic for models of face perception that have emphasized independent processing of functionally different aspects of faces. By contrast, our findings are consistent with models of face processing that propose that invariant physical aspects of faces and changeable social cues can be processed interdependently.     

Prototypes of race and gender: The invisibility of Black women

Research on racial and gender stereotyping typically focuses on the role of one of these social categories at a time rather than race/gender combinations. We suggest that the relative non-prototypicality of Black women’s race and gender results in their “invisibility” relative to White women and to Black and White men ( [Fryberg and Townsend, 2008] and [Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach, 2008]). Two studies address whether Black women go “unnoticed” and their voices “unheard,” by examining memory for Black women’s faces and speech contributions. We found that photos of Black women were least likely to be recognized (Study 1), and statements said by a Black woman in a group discussion were least likely to be correctly attributed (Study 2) compared to Black men and White women and White men. The importance and implications of invisibility as a unique form of discrimination are discussed.     

Categorization,categorical perception,and asymmetry in infants’ representation of face race

The present study examined whether 6‐ and 9‐month‐old Caucasian infants could categorize faces according to race. In Experiment 1, infants were familiarized with different female faces from a common ethnic background (i.e. either Caucasian or Asian) and then tested with female faces from a novel race category. Nine‐month‐olds were able to form discrete categories of Caucasian and Asian faces. However, 6‐month‐olds did not form discrete categories of faces based on race. In Experiment 2, a second group of 6‐ and 9‐month‐olds was tested to determine whether they could discriminate between different faces from the same race category. Results showed that both age groups could only discriminate between different faces from the own‐race category of Caucasian faces. The findings of the two experiments taken together suggest that 9‐month‐olds formed a category of Caucasian faces that are further differentiated at the individual level. In contrast, although they could form a category of Asian faces, they could not discriminate between such other‐race faces. This asymmetry in category formation at 9 months (i.e. categorization of own‐race faces vs. categorical perception of other‐race faces) suggests that differential experience with own‐ and other‐race faces plays an important role in infants’ acquisition of face processing abilities.     

Looking like a criminal: Stereotypical black facial features promote face source memory error

The present studies tested whether African American face type (stereotypical or nonstereotypical) facilitated stereotype-consistent categorization, and whether that categorization influenced memory accuracy and errors. Previous studies have shown that stereotypically Black features are associated with crime and violence (e.g., Blair, Judd, & Chapleau Psychological Science 15:674?C679, 2004; Blair, Judd, & Fallman Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87:763?C778, 2004; Blair, Judd, Sadler, & Jenkins Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83:5?C252002); here, we extended this finding to investigate whether there is a bias toward remembering and recategorizing stereotypical faces as criminals. Using category labels, consistent (or inconsistent) with race-based expectations, we tested whether face recognition and recategorization were driven by the similarity between a target??s facial features and a stereotyped category (i.e., stereotypical Black faces associated with crime/violence). The results revealed that stereotypical faces were associated more often with a stereotype-consistent label (Study 1), were remembered and correctly recategorized as criminals (Studies 2?C4), and were miscategorized as criminals when memory failed. These effects occurred regardless of race or gender. Together, these findings suggest that face types have strong category associations that can promote stereotype-motivated recognition errors. Implications for eyewitness accuracy are discussed.     

The influence of social factors and implicit racial bias on a generalized own‐race effect

The current study sought to determine whether the experimentally reported ‘own‐race effect’ is other‐race specific, or whether it is a generalized effect. The perceptual processing of own‐ versus two groups of other‐race faces was therefore explored in White and South Asian individuals. Participants completed a computer‐based discrimination task of White, South Asian and Black face‐morphs. Results showed a generalized own‐race effect for White and South Asian participants discriminating own‐ versus other‐race (White/South Asian and Black) faces, such that individuals demonstrated a perceptual discrimination advantage for own‐ versus other‐race faces in general. These findings were linked to implicit racial bias and other‐race individuating experience, demonstrating that social variables play an important role in the magnitude of the own‐race effect. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Asymmetrical responding to male versus female other-race categories in 9- to 12-month-old infants

Faces can be categorized along various dimensions including gender or race, an ability developing in infancy. Infant categorization studies have focused on facial attributes in isolation, but the interaction between these attributes remains poorly understood. Experiment 1 examined gender categorization of other-race faces in 9- and 12-month-old White infants. Nine- and 12-month-olds were familiarized with Asian male or female faces, and tested with a novel exemplar from the familiarized category paired with a novel exemplar from a novel category. Both age groups showed novel category preferences for novel Asian female faces after familiarization with Asian male faces, but showed no novel category preference for novel Asian male faces after familiarization with Asian female faces. This categorization asymmetry was not due to a spontaneous preference hindering novel category reaction (Experiment 2), and both age groups displayed difficulty discriminating among male, but not female, other-race faces (Experiment 3). These results indicate that category formation for male other-race faces is mediated by categorical perception. Overall, the findings suggest that even by 12 months of age, infants are not fully able to form gender category representations of other-race faces, responding categorically to male, but not female, other-race faces.     

Gender,Race, and Speech Style Stereotypes

Considerable research has shown that people have stereotypical beliefs about the speech and communication style of women and men. There is less research about stereotypes of Black people's speech, and none that jointly or comparably investigates communication stereotypes as a function of both gender and race. In this study, White college students (n = 111) rated a fictional character's speech on 36 pairs of words characteristic of communication style (e.g., emotional–unemotional) and also generated dialogue for the character. Targets' race and sex were varied. Results showed that beliefs about speech style were stronger for race than gender. Black speakers, both women and men, were rated as more direct and emotional, and less socially appropriate and playful, than White speakers. The dialogue generated by participants for Black speakers was less grammatical and more profane than for White speakers. Gender effects were consistent with earlier research but suggest a weakening of stereotypes; women's speech was seen as somewhat less direct and more emotional than men's speech. Beliefs about speech and communication style are important because they may function not only to describe what is but to prescribe what should be in social interaction.     

Facing prejudice: implicit prejudice and the perception of facial threat

We propose that social attitudes, and in particular implicit prejudice, bias people's perceptions of the facial emotion displayed by others. To test this hypothesis, we employed a facial emotion change-detection task in which European American participants detected the offset (Study 1) or onset (Study 2) of facial anger in both Black and White targets. Higher implicit (but not explicit) prejudice was associated with a greater readiness to perceive anger in Black faces, but neither explicit nor implicit prejudice predicted anger perceptions regarding similar White faces. This pattern indicates that European Americans high in implicit racial prejudice are biased to perceive threatening affect in Black but not White faces, suggesting that the deleterious effects of stereotypes may take hold extremely early in social interaction.