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After making a lineup decision, eyewitnesses may be asked to indicate their confidence in their decision. Eyewitness confidence is considered an important reflector of accuracy. Previous studies have considered the confidence-accuracy (CA) relationship—that is, the relationship between participants’ confidence in their lineup decision and the accuracy of that decision. However, the literature is limited and mixed concerning the CA relationship in cross-race scenarios. We considered the CA relationship for White and Asian participants and targets (fully crossed) using sequential lineups. Participants completed four trials (two White targets and two Asian targets). For each trial, they watched a mock-crime video, performed a distractor task, made a sequential lineup decision (target-present or target-absent), and indicated confidence in their lineup decision. White participants had higher identification accuracy with White than Asian targets, while Asian participants were similarly accurate with White and Asian targets. White participants’ confidence was better calibrated for White than Asian targets, except for when they had medium-high confidence (no difference). This finding is not only theoretically relevant—showing support for the optimality hypothesis—but also practically relevant—suggesting that the CA relationship may differ for target races at some levels of confidence.

PurposeAnecdotal evidence suggests that casting actors with similar facial features in a movie can pose challenges in foreign markets, hindering the audience's ability to recognize and remember characters. Extending developments in the literature on the cross-race effect, we hypothesize that facial similarity – the extent to which the actors starring in a movie share similar facial features – will reduce the country-level box-office performance of US movies in East and South-East Asia (ESEA) countries.Design/methodology/approachWe assembled data from various secondary data sources on US non-animation movies (2012–2021) and their releases in ESEA countries. Combining the data resulted in a cross-section of 2,616 movie-country observations.FindingsActors' facial similarity in a US movie's cast reduces its box-office performance in ESEA countries. This effect is weakened as immigration in the country, internet penetration in the country and star power increase and strengthened as cast size increases.Originality/valueThis first study on the effects of cast's facial similarity on box-office performance represents a novel extension to the growing literature on the antecedents of movies' box-office performance by being at the intersection of the two literature streams on (1) the box-office effects of cast characteristics and (2) the antecedents, in general, of box-office performance in the ESEA region.

Across three studies, we utilized an item-method directed forgetting (DF) procedure with faces of different races to investigate the magnitude of intentional forgetting of own-race versus other-race faces. All three experiments shared the same procedure but differed in the number of faces presented. Participants were presented with own-race and other-race faces, each followed by a remember or forget memory instruction, and subsequently received a recognition test for all studied faces. We obtained a robust cross-race effect (CRE) but did not find a DF effect in Experiment 1 . Experiments 2 and 3 used shorter study and test lists and obtained a significant DF effect along with significant CRE, but no interaction between face type and memory instruction. The results suggest that own-race and other-race faces are equally susceptible to DF. The results are discussed in terms of the theoretical explanations for CRE and their implications for DF.

Background/Objectives: People are better at recognizing the faces of racial in-group members than out-group members. This own-race bias relies on pattern recognition and memory processes, which rely on hemispheric specialization. We hypothesized that handedness, a proxy for hemispheric specialization, would moderate own-race bias. Specifically, consistently handed individuals perform better on tasks that require the hemispheres to work independently, while inconsistently handed individuals perform better on tasks that require integration. This led to the hypothesis that inconsistently handed individuals would show less own-race bias, driven by an increase in accuracy. Methods: 281 participants completed the study in exchange for course credit. Of those, the sample was isolated to Caucasian (174) and African American individuals (41). Participants were shown two target faces (one Caucasian and one African American), given several distractor tasks, and then asked to identify the target faces during two sequential line-ups, each terminating when participants made an identification judgment. Results: Continuous handedness score and the match between participant race and target face race were entered into a binary logistic regression predicting correct/incorrect identifications. The overall model was statistically significant, Χ2 (3, N = 430) = 11.036, p = 0.012, Nagelkerke R2 = 0.038, culminating in 76% correct classifications. Analyses of the parameter estimates showed that the racial match, b = 0.53, SE = 0.23, Wald Χ2 (1) = 5.217, p = 0.022, OR = 1.703 and the interaction between handedness and the racial match, b = 0.51, SE = 0.23, Wald test = 4.813, p = 0.028, OR = 1.671 significantly contributed to the model. The model indicated that the probability of identification was similar for own- or cross-race targets amongst inconsistently handed individuals. Consistently handed individuals, by contrast, showed an increase in accuracy for the own-race target and a decrease in accuracy for cross-race targets. Conclusions: Results partially supported the hypotheses. Inconsistently handed individuals did show less own-race bias. This finding, however, seemed to be driven by differences in accuracy amongst consistently handed individuals rather than a hypothesized increase in accuracy amongst inconsistently handed individuals. Underlying hemispheric specialization, as measured by proxy with handedness, may impact the own-race bias in facial recognition. Future research is required to investigate the mechanisms, however, as the directional differences were different than hypothesized.

PurposeThis study aims to examine own-race bias (ORB) in prospective person memory (PPM) and explore whether the effects of ORB were moderated by two factors that are salient to real-world missing person appeals (MPAs): the number of appeals an individual encounters and the frequency in which these appeals are encountered.Design/methodology/approachA mixed experimental design was used whereby 269 Caucasian participants studied MPAs (4 or 8 appeals) for various frequencies (once or three times), which featured both white and non-white missing individuals. Participants then completed a PPM sorting task that required them to identify missing individuals as a secondary objective.FindingsORB was not observed for prospective person memory performance, although participants did demonstrate a greater conservative bias for appeals involving different ethnicities. The main effect of number and frequency of appeals on PPM was significant, however, these variables did not moderate ORB.Research limitations/implicationsThe current study has limitations that should be taken into consideration. There was an underrepresentation of non-white ethnicities within the sample which limits the ability to determine if ORB effects vary across ethnicities. Additionally, experimental simulations of missing person identifications still lack ecological validity and thus future innovative methods are required to study missing person identifications more realistically.Originality/valueThis study demonstrates that PPM performance may not be influenced by ORB effects overall as found within previous generic memory tasks, although the influence of the number and frequency of appeals presented continues to demonstrate the need to improve MPAs to maximise public facial recognition and identification of missing persons.

The own-ethnicity effect (OEE) is a recognition deficit for faces of other ethnic groups compared to one’s own group. Thirty-two border patrol (i.e., police) officers at a major international airport expected to have high frequency contact with multiple other ethnic group faces were compared with 32 bank employees and 64 students. German participants viewed out-group faces of African Americans, Mexican Americans/Mexican Nationals, and Turkish faces and German (in-group) faces in a standard recognition and a delayed-matching task. Generally, performance was better as a function of self-reported daily job contact for both tasks. Patrol officers were better with Black faces, while students were better with German faces for the standard recognition task. Although an OEE was present for all groups, it was attenuated for border patrol officers. Job contact with multiple out-groups was associated with face processing. Errors in recognition and matching faces of other ethnic groups pose problems for security in an increasingly global society. Customs agencies and security organizations employing an ethnically diverse workforce along with perceptual training for recognizing and matching out-group members will be better prepared to meet the demands of international security.

•The accuracy of craniofacial reconstruction (CFR) regarding ancestry was tested.•The practitioners produced more recognisable CFR from familiar-race.•The assessors were not affected by their ancestry.•Ancestry experience can influence the accuracy of CFR. Previous research into the reliability of forensic craniofacial reconstruction (CFR) has focused primarily on the accuracy of reconstructed faces from European or African ancestry skulls. Moreover, the recognition of CFR in relation to the experience and ancestry of the practitioners and the assessors has not been previously considered. The cross-race effect is a recognised phenomenon in psychology studies, where familiar ancestry faces are recognised more readily than unfamiliar ancestry faces, but there is a paucity of research addressing the relationship between the accuracy of reconstructed faces and the familiarity with this ancestry by the practitioners/assessors. The aims of this research were to investigate whether ‘unfamiliar-race effect’ has any influence on the accuracy of CFR and to evaluate how much the correct recognition rate of CFR is affected by the cross-race effect. Eight CFRs from three ancestry groups were produced by experienced practitioners in order to explore the aims. The results demonstrated that practitioners produced more recognisable CFRs using skulls from a familiar ancestry than skulls from unfamiliar ancestries.

The cross-race effect (CRE) describes the finding that same-race faces are recognized more accurately than cross-race faces. According to social–cognitive theories of the CRE, processes of categorization and individuation at encoding account for differential recognition of same- and cross-race faces. Recent face memory research has suggested that similar but distinct categorization and individuation processes also occur postencoding, at recognition . Using a divided-attention paradigm, in Experiments 1 A and 1 B we tested and confirmed the hypothesis that distinct postencoding categorization and individuation processes occur during the recognition of same- and cross-race faces. Specifically, postencoding configural divided-attention tasks impaired recognition accuracy more for same-race than for cross-race faces; on the other hand, for White (but not Black) participants, postencoding featural divided-attention tasks impaired recognition accuracy more for cross-race than for same-race faces. A social categorization paradigm used in Experiments 2 A and 2 B tested the hypothesis that the postencoding in-group or out-group social orientation to faces affects categorization and individuation processes during the recognition of same-race and cross-race faces. Postencoding out-group orientation to faces resulted in categorization for White but not for Black participants. This was evidenced by White participants’ impaired recognition accuracy for same-race but not for cross-race out-group faces. Postencoding in-group orientation to faces had no effect on recognition accuracy for either same-race or cross-race faces. The results of Experiments 2 A and 2 B suggest that this social orientation facilitates White but not Black participants’ individuation and categorization processes at recognition. Models of recognition memory for same-race and cross-race faces need to account for processing differences that occur at both encoding and recognition.

People often recognize same-race faces better than other-race faces. This cross-race effect (CRE) has been proposed to arise in part because learners devote fewer cognitive resources to encode faces of social out-groups. In three experiments, we evaluated whether learners’ other-race mnemonic deficits are due to “cognitive disregard” during study and whether this disregard is under metacognitive control. Learners studied each face either for as long as they wanted (the self-paced condition) or for the average time taken by a self-paced learner (the fixed-rate condition). Self-paced learners allocated equal amounts of study time to same-race and other-race faces, and having control over study time did not change the size of the CRE. In the second and third experiments, both self-paced and fixed-rate learners were given instructions to “individuate” other-race faces. Individuation instructions caused self-paced learners to allocate more study time to other-race faces, but this did not significantly reduce the size of the CRE, even for learners who reported extensive contact with other races. We propose that the differential processing that people apply to faces of different races and the subsequent other-race mnemonic deficit are not due to learners’ strategic cognitive disregard of other-race faces.

The use of the category of race in science (in relation to humans) remains controversial. During the last few years there has been a lively debate on this topic in the field of a relatively young neuroscience discipline called cultural neuroscience. The main focus of cultural neuroscience is on biocultural conditions of the development of different dimensions of human perceptive activity, both cognitive or emotional. These dimensions are analysed through the comparison of representatives of different social and ethnic groups. In my article, I present arguments supporting these two hypotheses: (1) the other-race effect understood as an individual, distinct effect does not exist. It is rather an exemplification of a much broader phenomenon which I call the unfamiliarity homogeneity effect. It includes not only problems with differentiation and recognition of faces of representatives of other ethnic groups, but also covers similar recognitional difficulties (e.g. recognition of members of other- social groups, other languages or even certain sounds and objects); (2) The race-based terminology and categories are used in cultural neuroscience research in a vague and inconsistent manner. Such an approach distorts the science both in empirically and conceptually significant respects. The unfamiliarity homogeneity effect is an example of such a situation: narrowing it to the other-race effect makes it difficult to analyse in a wider context crucial for its understanding.