A Model of Generalized Ingroup Recognition Advantage

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。人们通常对不属于(而不是)自己种族的人的认可度较差。这种众所周知的跨种族效应可能会导致种族差异。例如，在美国刑事司法系统中，近三分之一后来被推翻的错误定罪是基于跨种族鉴定中的错误。跨种族效应似乎只针对面孔：看一眼面孔，很快就会发现关于种族、性别、年龄和其他社会类别的信息。然而，许多超越脸部，甚至超越人的物体，可能标志着群体成员关系，并导致认知偏差。本研究考察了以跨种族效应为代表的群体内认知优势是否可能是一种普遍的认知偏向。这项研究有可能改变我们对社会对感知和认知的影响的理论理解，包括导致种族差异的基本心理机制。这个项目建立在社会心理学、发展心理学、认知神经科学和视觉科学的研究基础上，以开发一个全面的群体识别模型，并检查其社会影响。该项目围绕三组实验进行组织，所有实验都使用了一个基本范式，参与者先完成一项学习任务，然后再完成一项识别任务。第一组实验旨在区分群体内认知优势的两个原因：人们可能更好地识别与自己群体相关的信息，因为(1)他们与自己的群体有更多的终生经历，因此拥有知觉专业知识，和/或(2)他们更感兴趣，更有动力去关注自己的群体。每个原因都可以通过实验进行测试，参与者组成新的小组，并接触到他们以前没有经验但与他们的小组或另一个小组相关的对象。第二组实验考察一个人所属的不同群体是否具有相同程度的组内识别优势，第三组实验考察广义的组内识别优势如何导致对他人的刻板印象判断。在严格的实验控制条件下，本研究检验了一个新的模型，该模型解释了：(1)组内再认的机制和边界条件；(2)广义组内再认优势背后的认知过程的定性性质；(3)广义组内再认优势的含义。这项研究的跨学科和综合性涉及社会心理学家、政策制定者、法律学者、执法部门和普通公众，它可以为干预措施提供信息，以减少刻板印象的判断。该项目还为少数群体服务机构(MSI)的学生提供专业培训，该机构在多样性、社会流动性和毕业率方面排名很高。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).People often have worse recognition memory for individuals who are not (versus are) in their racial group. This well-known cross-race effect can lead to racial disparities. As one example, in the US criminal justice system nearly a third of wrongful convictions that later are overturned were based on errors made in cross-race identification. The cross-race effect would seem to be specific to faces: A glance at a face quickly reveals information about race, gender, age, and other social categories. Yet many objects beyond a face, or even beyond a person, may signal group membership and cause a recognition bias. This research investigates the possibility that the ingroup recognition advantage exemplified by the cross-race effect is a general recognition bias. This research has the potential to transform our theoretical understanding of social influences on perception and cognition, including the basic psychological mechanisms that contribute to racial disparities. This project builds upon research in social psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and vision science to develop a comprehensive model of ingroup recognition and examine its social impact. The project is organized around three sets of experiments, all using a basic paradigm in which participants complete a learning task followed by a recognition task. The first set of experiments aims to differentiate two causes of an ingroup recognition advantage: People may better recognize information relevant to their own group because (1) they have more lifetime experiences with their group and thus have perceptual expertise, and/or (2) they are more interested and motivated to attend to their own group. Each cause can be tested with experiments in which participants form new groups and are exposed to objects with which they have no prior experience but are related to their group or another group. A second set of experiments examines whether an ingroup recognition advantage occurs to the same extent for different groups to which one belongs, and a third set examines how the generalized ingroup recognition advantage can lead to stereotypic judgments of others. Under conditions of tight experimental control, this research tests a novel model that accounts for: (1) the mechanisms and boundary conditions of ingroup recognition; (2) the qualitative nature of the cognitive processes underlying the generalized ingroup recognition advantage; and (3) the implications of the generalized ingroup recognition advantage. The interdisciplinary and integrative nature of this research has implications that are relevant to social psychologists, policymakers, legal scholars, law enforcement, and the general public, and it can inform interventions to reduce stereotyped judgments. The project also provides specialized training to students at a minority-serving institution (MSI) that ranks highly in terms of diversity, social mobility, and graduation rates.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.