1992 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Exploratory Investigation on Own-race Bias in Face Recognition
| Project/Area Number |
03610064
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Psychology
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| Research Institution | Otemon-Gakuin University |
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Principal Investigator |
YOSHIKAWA Sakiko Otemon-Gakuin University Faculty of Letters, Dept.of Psychology, Associate Professor, 文学部, 助教授 (40158407)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1991 – 1992
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| Keywords | face recognition / own-race bias / personality impression / recognition memory for faces / 再認記憶 |
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| Research Abstract |
The purpose of this research project was to investigate the mechanism of own-race bias in face recognition. In Study 1, similarities and differences of verbal descriptions of physical characteristics of faces were analized using 8 Japanese and 8 Black-African face photographs. Twenty-four Japanese and 2 Tanzanian subjects took part in the study. Main facial parts which 2 Tanzanian subjects described most frequently were hair, eyes, nose, and mouth for both Japanese and Brack-African faces and they did not mentined eyebrow, race and gender of faces. In contrast, Japanese subjects described hair and eyes most frequently, followed by nose, mouth, face shape, and eyebrows. Additionally, relative importance of facial parts in descriptions differed for Japanese faces vs. Black-African faces. The cross-racial differences of descriptions suggest a perceptual bias toward relevant facial features for differentiation within own-race faces. In Study 2, judgments of facial impression of Japanese, C
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aucasian and Black-African faces. were compared using twelve 7-point personality rating scales(e.g. extrovert, friendly, short-tempered). A hypothesis, which states that own-race bias stems from a difficulty in infering personality impressions from other-race faces was examined using rating data. The results showed that there were no marked differences in rating data among three different races of faces and therefore did not support the hypothesis. The study 3 was carried out to examine the effect of own-race bias in recognition memory for faces using Japanese, Caucasian and Black-African face photographs. In total, 100 students were participated in the experiment. The result showed that the memory performance was higher for Japanese faces than for Caucasian or Black-African faces and the size of the race effect was approximately equal both for immediate and 1-week delayd recognition tests. The result suggests that the own-race bias in recognition memory for faces was caused at the encoding stage in facial memory processes. Less
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