Face Perception and Identification

Author

Audrey Aamot, University of Montana, MissoulaFollow

Graduation Year

2018

Graduation Month

May

Document Type

Professional Paper

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

School or Department

Psychology

Major

Psychology

Faculty Mentor Department

Psychology

Faculty Mentor

Yoonhee Jang

Keywords

own-age bias, own-race effect, cross-race effect, memory, face perception, face identification

Subject Categories

Cognition and Perception

Abstract

The present research aimed to examine the combined effects of the own-race effect and own-age bias in relation to memory performance. The own-race effect suggests that individuals perform better when asked to remember faces of the same race as their own, as opposed to faces of a different race (Meissner, Brigham & Butz, 2005). Own-age bias is a tendency for individuals to perform better when remembering faces from the same age group as their own (Rhodes & Anastasi, 2005, 2012). It was hypothesized that when recognizing faces of a different age and race, memory accuracy would be worse, when compared to faces of either the same age or same race. Significant differences were expected across all conditions. 25 White participants (18 females, 7 males) age 18-31 were recruited online using Sona Systems and flyers posted on campus. E-prime was used to create and run the experiment on a computer. Participants were asked to remember a series of face pictures (adopted from Minear & Park, 2004), which consisted of (1) white-old; (2) white-young; (3) black-old; and (4) black-young face pictures. Their memory was assessed by a “yes-no” recognition memory test in which half of the test items were studied faces (40), and half were non-studied faces (40). Hit rate and false alarm rate were recorded, in order to calculate mean accuracy. No significant differences were found in relation to race. Past studies were replicated in relation to own-age bias, with the white-old and black-old conditions having a significantly lower mean accuracy than the white-young and black-young conditions respectively. The mean accuracy of the black-young condition was marginally higher than the mean accuracy of the white-young condition.

Honors College Research Project

No

Recommended Citation

Aamot, Audrey, "Face Perception and Identification" (2018). Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts. 211.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/utpp/211