Do I Know You? The Role of Culture in Racial Essentialism and Facial Recognition Memory

Abstract

We examine relations between racial essentialism—the belief that racial categories are natural and homogeneous due to shared underlying properties—and the Own-Race Bias (ORB)—the tendency to recognize racial ingroup faces better than racial outgroup faces. We assessed essentialist beliefs and Facial Recognition Memory (FRM) for Black, White, and Asian targets in White American (WA) and Asian/Asian American (A/AA) participants. Because essentialism leads to increased perception of group homogeneity, we predicted a positive association between ORB and racial outgroup essentialism. Group differences emerged on both measures: WA participants essentialized racial outgroups more than their ingroup and recognized White faces more accurately than Black or Asian faces, whereas A/AA participants essentialized their ingroup more than racial outgroups and did not demonstrate the ORB. The overall association between racial essentialism and ORB was not observed within groups; suggesting that cultural differences might underlie group differences in relations between FRM and essentialism.