{"id":35184,"date":"2015-09-15T12:13:09","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T16:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=35184"},"modified":"2015-09-23T09:15:35","modified_gmt":"2015-09-23T13:15:35","slug":"new-brock-research-explores-recognition-of-other-race-faces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2015\/09\/new-brock-research-explores-recognition-of-other-race-faces\/","title":{"rendered":"New Brock research explores recognition of other-race faces"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two pictures of the same face can look very different, which is why many of us don\u2019t like our passport photo. Trying to recognize faces when appearance varies is especially challenging when viewing faces of a different race, new Brock University research has shown.<\/span><\/p>\n

In what is a twist to the common expression, \u201cthey all look the same to me,\u201d a research team led by psychologist Catherine Mondloch found that people were twice as likely to believe that two pictures of the same person belonged to different people when sorting other-race photos compared to own-race faces.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve known for a long time that it is reasonably easy to recognize faces from our own age and ethnic group,\u201d says Mondloch. \u201cYet, when we encounter people from a category with which we are less familiar \u2013 infant faces, other-races faces, older faces \u2013 we are less accurate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe research field has focused on the fact that we have a hard time telling some faces apart,\u201d says Mondloch. \u201cNow we know that telling faces apart is only part of the story. Our finding turns the field upside down a little bit; this is the flip side of the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mondloch and her team, Xiaomei Zhou and Sarah Laurence, presented East Asian and Caucasian research participants with a pile of 40 photographs of either own or other-race faces.<\/p>\n

The researchers asked participants to select photographs of the same person and put them into separate piles, so that each pile would contain all of the images of one person.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we didn\u2019t tell them is the pile included 20 pictures of two people, so the correct solution was two piles each containing 20 pictures.\u201d explains Mondloch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t know that. The number of piles each person made told us how many different identities they perceived.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the common perception that other-race faces look \u201cthe same\u201d to someone of a different race, then, \u201cpeople should make fewer piles when sorting other-race faces,\u201d says Mondloch.<\/p>\n

In previous research, when a British research team administered a similar test to participants to distinguish same-race images, participants made an average of six piles.<\/p>\n

But in this latest research on other-race faces, \u201cpeople made twice as many piles for other-race faces; they were making 11 or 13 piles. Rather than thinking there were six different people, participants perceived 13 different people when there were only two,\u201d says Mondloch.<\/p>\n

The results were the same with the East Asian and Caucasian participants.<\/p>\n

All photographs were of the same two people, but with differences in lighting, facial expression, hairstyles, makeup and other small changes in appearance.<\/p>\n

Mondloch says the research has important implications for passport officers and other professionals tasked with identifying individuals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard enough to match a person to their photo or to see that this driver\u2019s license and this passport really belong to the same person because appearance varies from day to day,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf these are pictures of somebody from categories that are not very familiar, like other-race faces, that\u2019s going to be even harder, because that small change in appearance is going to lead you to think it\u2019s a different person.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research findings also apply to everyday social situations, says Mondloch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s the awkwardness of failing to say hello to somebody you should recognize. This study suggests that\u2019s going to be much more likely when it\u2019s somebody from a different ethnic background,\u201d says Mondloch.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now the question is, can we change that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mondloch\u2019s research \u2013 \u201cThe flip side of the other-race coin: They all look different to me\u201d \u2013 was published September 14 in the British Journal of Psychology<\/em>, http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/bjop.12147\/abstract<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two pictures of the same face can look very different, which is why many of us don\u2019t like our passport photo. Trying to recognize faces when appearance varies is especially challenging when viewing faces of a different race, new Brock University research has shown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":35185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3319,5],"tags":[3357,29,2723,3325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35186,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35184\/revisions\/35186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}