Collaborative Research: Effects of cross-race contact on perceptual expertise, expectancies, and individuated face processing

大多数人从他们自己的经历中知道，识别一个不同种族的人比识别一个属于自己种族的人更难。我们将这种现象称为跨种族认知缺陷(或CRD)。CRD是一种稳健的效应，在世界各地都有研究。它既影响了试图记住黑人面孔的白人，也影响了试图记住白人面孔的黑人，以及两个试图记住亚洲面孔的群体。该团队将调查可能导致CRD的两个心理过程。首先，人们可能无法从不同种族的面孔中获得有用的信息，因为他们没有接受过在这些面孔中找到正确信息的培训。其次，人们可能怀有一种期望，认为面孔通常应该看起来像来自自己种族群体的面孔，这导致他们认为跨种族的面孔天生就是外国人。此外，该团队将研究可能导致CRD的跨种族接触的自然变异，并将实施跨种族面孔的重点培训，这些培训将在线或通过智能手机应用程序进行。以及(C)导致CRD及其与接触的关系的认知操作。这项工作将利用视觉处理的两个重要理论--感知学习和预测编码--来预测CRD，这是一种具有深远的社会、心理和社会后果的现象。在目标2中，团队转向CRD如何影响从一个面孔到另一个面孔的泛化的问题。例如，如果参与者了解到组中的一个成员是友好的(或不友好的)，该信息是否适用于组中的其他成员？强有力的理论论证认为，刺激之间的相似性应该促进泛化，而CRD--其核心--反映了跨种族面孔之间的相似性感知。这项工作的科学影响是多方面的：它将整合视觉科学和社会心理学，并探索一种减少偏见和刻板印象的不同寻常的方法。此外，该团队将开发一款免费的面部训练智能手机应用程序，供研究人员使用。这项工作的更广泛影响也是广泛的：CRD在实验室之外有许多后果(例如，目击者证词、人际互动)，该项目将调查减少CRD的方法。该团队将开发并验证一款免费应用程序，该应用程序将提供给想要练习跨种族人脸识别的普通人。

Most people know from their own experience that it is harder to recognize someone of a different race than it is to recognize someone who belongs to one’s own racial group. We call this phenomenon the cross-race recognition deficit (or CRD). The CRD is a robust effect which has been studied all over the world. It influences both White people trying to remember Black faces, but also Black people trying to remember White faces, and both groups trying to remember Asian faces. The team will investigate two psychological processes that may contribute to the CRD. First, people may fail to pick up on useful information in cross-race faces because they are untrained at finding the right kinds of information in those faces. Second, people may harbor an expectation that faces, in general, should look like faces from their own racial group, leading them to see cross-race faces as inherently foreign. In addition, the team will examine natural variation in cross-race contact which may underlie CRD, and will implement focused training with cross-race faces which will be delivered online or through a smartphone application. In this study, the team hopes to (a) shed light on a robust, important phenomenon that affects how people see one another, (b) examine a strategy to improve cross-race recognition, and (c) introduce improved tools (like a smartphone app) and measures that will be available for free to scientists and lay people alike.In this set of studies, the researchers will examine (a) the CRD, (b) the relationship between the CRD and the extent of an individual’s contact or experience with members of other racial groups, as well as (c) the cognitive operations that give rise to both the CRD and its relationship to contact. The work will leverage two prominent theories of visual processing – perceptual learning and predictive coding – to make predictions about the CRD, a phenomenon with far-reaching social psychological and societal consequences. Aim 1 of this proposal tests a theoretical model (Correll, Hudson, Guillermo, & Earls, 2016) which argues that the relationship between cross-race contact and the CRD is mediated by changes in (a) perceptual learning, which allows the perceiver to more efficaciously encode individuating information from the kinds of faces that a perceiver typically encounters; and (b) expectancies about what a face should look like, which again reflect the perceiver’s social experience. In Aim 2, the team turns to the question of how the CRD impacts generalization from one face to another. For example, if a participant learns that one member of a group is friendly (or unfriendly), does that information generalize to other members of the group? Robust theoretical arguments contend that similarity between stimuli should promote generalization, and the CRD – at its heart – reflects the perception of similarity among cross-race faces. The scientific impacts of this work are numerous: It will integrate vision science and social psychology, and explore an unusual method for reducing prejudice and stereotyping. Furthermore, the team will develop a free face-training smartphone application that will be available for researchers to use. The broader impacts of the work are also wide ranging: The CRD has many consequences outside the laboratory (e.g., eye-witness testimony, interpersonal interactions), and this project will investigate ways to reduce CRD. The team will develop and validate a free app that will be available to lay people who want to practice cross-race face recognition. In addition, given a diverse group of undergraduate research assistants at both institutions, this work will expose under-represented populations to the type of science from which these groups are often excluded.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.