The Neural Signature of the Own-Race Bias: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

Wiese, H.; Kaufmann, J.M.; Schweinberger, S.R.

Abstract

Participants are more accurate at remembering faces of their own relative to another ethnic group (own-race bias, ORB). This phenomenon has been explained by reduced perceptual expertise, or alternatively, by the categorization of other-race faces into social out-groups and reduced effort to individuate such faces. We examined event-related potential (ERP) correlates of the ORB, testing recognition memory for Asian and Caucasian faces in Caucasian and Asian participants. Both groups demonstrated a significant ORB in recognition memory. ERPs revealed more negative N170 amplitudes for other-race faces in both groups, probably reflecting more effortful structural encoding. Importantly, the ethnicity effect in left-hemispheric N170 during learning correlated significantly with the behavioral ORB. Similarly, in the subsequent N250, both groups demonstrated more negative amplitudes for other-race faces, and during test phases, this effect correlated significantly with the ORB. We suggest that ethnicity effects in the N170 reflect an early categorization of other-race faces into a social out-group, resulting in less efficient encoding and thus decreased memory. Moreover, ethnicity effects in the N250 may represent the “tagging” of other-race faces as perceptually salient, which hampers the recognition of these faces.

Citation

Wiese, H., Kaufmann, J., & Schweinberger, S. (2014). The Neural Signature of the Own-Race Bias: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials. Cerebral Cortex, 24(3), 826-835. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhs369

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 28, 2012
• Online Publication Date: Nov 21, 2012
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2014
• Deposit Date: Oct 7, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 10, 2017
• Journal: Cerebral Cortex
• Print ISSN: 1047-3211
• Electronic ISSN: 1460-2199
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 826-835
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhs369
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1452935