Understanding the mechanisms underlying the other-'race' effect: An attempt at integrating different perspectives.

Although different human races do not exist from the perspective of biology and genetics, ascribed 'race' influences psychological processing, such as memory and perception of faces. Research from this Special Issue, as well as a wealth of previous research, shows that other-'race' faces are more difficult to recognize compared to own-'race' faces, a phenomenon known as the other-'race' effect. Theories of expertise attribute the cause of the other-'race' effect to less efficient visual representations of other-'race' faces, which results from reduced visual expertise with other-'race' faces compared to own-'race' faces due to limited contact with individuals from other 'racial' groups. By contrast, social-cognitive accounts attribute the cause of the other-'race' effect to reduced motivation to individuate other-'race' faces compared to own-'race' faces. Evidence for both types of theories is still mixed, but progress in understanding the phenomenon has also been hampered by the fact that there has been little crosstalk between these accounts, which tend to be rooted in separate domains of experimental perception science and social psychology, respectively. To promote an integrative perspective on current knowledge on own- versus other-'race' face processing, the present Special Issue bridges different psychological subdisciplines, showcasing research using a large variety of methodological approaches and measures. In this guest editorial, we briefly highlight individual contributions to this Special Issue and offer what we see as important avenues for future research on the other-'race' effect.

Shooter biases and stereotypes among police and civilians.

The present research assesses potential correlates of discriminatory police behavior, comparing police and civilian participants in a first person shooter task (FPST) as well as on various self-report measures of intergroup contact, intergroup attitudes, and ideological beliefs in three preregistered studies. Study 1 (N = 330), using a FPST with a short response window (630 ms), did not observe shooter biases in reaction times, error rates and signal detection parameters in neither police nor civilian participants. Study 2a (N = 290), using a longer response window (850 ms), observed a shooter bias in reaction times, error rates, and response criterion in both civilian and police participants. These shooter biases were largely driven by faster reactions, fewer errors, and more liberal shoot decisions for armed Arab (vs. White) targets. Study 2b (N = 191; 850 ms response window) closely replicated shooter biases in reaction times, error rates, and response criterion in a sample of civilian online participants. Across studies, we observed similar results in the shooter task for police and civilian samples. Furthermore, both police and civilian participants expressed anti-Muslim and anti-Arab attitudes across a variety of self-report measures. However, compared to civilians, police participants reported higher levels of anti-Muslim attitudes on some measures as well as higher levels of social dominance orientation, which might pose additional risk factors for discriminatory behavior. Lastly, while we observed reliable individual differences in self-reported intergroup attitudes, ideologies, and intergroup contact, none of these characteristics correlated with shooter biases.

Real-life outgroup exposure, self-reported outgroup contact and the other-race effect.

People are better at recognizing faces from their own racial or ethnic group compared with faces from other racial or ethnic groups, known as the other-'race' effect (ORE). Several theories of the ORE assume that memory for other-race faces is impaired because people have less contact with members of other racial or ethnic groups, resulting in lower visual expertise. The present research investigates contact theories of the ORE, using self-report contact measures and objective measures of potential outgroup exposure (estimated from participants' residential location and from GPS tracking). Across six studies (total N = 2660), we observed that White American and White German participants displayed better memory for White faces compared with Black or Middle Eastern faces, whereas Black American participants displayed similarly equal or better memory for White compared with Black faces. We did not observe any relations between the ORE and objective measures of potential outgroup exposure. Only in Studies 2a and 2b, we observed very small correlations (rs = -.08 to .06) between 4 out of 30 contact measures and the ORE. We discuss methodological limitations and implications for theories of the ORE.

Beyond stereotypes: Prejudice as an important missing force explaining group disparities.

We comment on Cesario's assertion that social psychological intergroup research focuses solely on stereotypes, neglecting actual differences between groups to explain group disparities. This reasoning, however, misses yet another explaining force: In addition to stereotypes, ample laboratory and field research documents relationships between group disparities, discrimination, and prejudice, which cannot be explained by people's accurate judgments of real-world group differences.

Racial Bias in Police Traffic Stops: White Residents' County-Level Prejudice and Stereotypes Are Related to Disproportionate Stopping of Black Drivers.

Racial disparities in policing are well documented, but the reasons for such disparities are often debated. In the current research, we weighed in on this debate using a regional-level bias framework: We investigated the link between racial disparities in police traffic stops and regional-level racial bias, employing data from more than 130 million police traffic stops in 1,413 U.S. counties and county-level measures of racial bias from more than 2 million online respondents. Compared with their population share in county demographics, Black drivers were stopped at disproportionate rates in the majority of counties. Crucially, disproportionate stopping of Black drivers was higher in counties with higher levels of racial prejudice by White residents (rs = .07-.36). Furthermore, county-level aggregates of White people's threat-related stereotypes were less consistent in predicting disproportionate stopping (rs = .00-.19). These observed relationships between regional-level bias and racial disparities in policing highlight the importance of the context in which police operate.

Recognizing Emily and Latisha: Inconsistent Effects of Name Stereotypicality on the Other-Race Effect.

A person's name may activate social category information, which has been shown to lead to stereotyping and discrimination in various contexts. However, no previous research has investigated the influence of names on more basic processes of person perception. We present a set of seven experimental studies examining the influence of names on face recognition, namely, on the other-race effect (i.e., the relative difficulty to recognize outgroup faces). White-American participants completed online recognition tasks with White ingroup faces and Black or Chinese outgroup faces. Outgroup faces were presented with typical outgroup names versus typical White names; White faces were presented with typical White names versus infrequent names. We expected better recognition of outgroup faces with typical White names compared to outgroup faces with typical outgroup names. Employing an internal meta-analysis, we observe overall evidence of a small but significant effect (dz = 0.11). However, the pattern of results across the seven studies is inconsistent. Given that particularly the high-powered pre-registered studies did not show an effect, we suggest that the effect should be interpreted with caution. We discuss that a small effect may still have important implications for real life as well as for theories of the ORE, emphasizing the importance of future research regarding the influence of name typicality on inter-group face perception.

Investigating the other-race effect in working memory.

People have difficulties in remembering other-race faces; this so-called other-race effect (ORE) has been frequently observed in long-term recognition memory (LTM). Several theories argue that the ORE in LTM is caused by differences in earlier processing stages, such as encoding of ingroup and outgroup faces. We test this hypothesis by exploring whether the ORE can already be observed in visual working memory (VWM)-an intermediate system located between encoding processes and LTM storage. In four independent experiments, we observed decreased performance for outgroup faces compared to ingroup faces using three different VWM tasks: an adaptive N-back task, a self-ordered pointing task, and a change detection task. Also, we found that the number of items stored in VWM is smaller for outgroup faces than for ingroup faces. Further, we explored whether performance differences in the change detection task are related to the classic ORE in recognition memory. Our results provide further evidence that the ORE originates during earlier stages of cognitive processing. We discuss that (how) future ORE research may benefit from considering theories and evidence from the VWM literature.

Beyond colour perception: auditory-visual synaesthesia induces experiences of geometric objects in specific locations.

Our brain constantly integrates signals across different senses. Auditory-visual synaesthesia is an unusual form of cross-modal integration in which sounds evoke involuntary visual experiences. Previous research primarily focuses on synaesthetic colour, but little is known about non-colour synaesthetic visual features. Here we studied a group of synaesthetes for whom sounds elicit consistent visual experiences of coloured 'geometric objects' located at specific spatial location. Changes in auditory pitch alter the brightness, size, and spatial height of synaesthetic experiences in a systematic manner resembling the cross-modal correspondences of non-synaesthetes, implying synaesthesia may recruit cognitive/neural mechanisms for 'normal' cross-modal processes. To objectively assess the impact of synaesthetic objects on behaviour, we devised a multi-feature cross-modal synaesthetic congruency paradigm and asked participants to perform speeded colour or shape discrimination. We found irrelevant sounds influenced performance, as quantified by congruency effects, demonstrating that synaesthetes were not able to suppress their synaesthetic experiences even when these were irrelevant for the task. Furthermore, we found some evidence for task-specific effects consistent with feature-based attention acting on the constituent features of synaesthetic objects: synaesthetic colours appeared to have a stronger impact on performance than synaesthetic shapes when synaesthetes attended to colour, and vice versa when they attended to shape. We provide the first objective evidence that visual synaesthetic experience can involve multiple features forming object-like percepts and suggest that each feature can be selected by attention despite it being internally generated. These findings suggest theories of the brain mechanisms of synaesthesia need to incorporate a broader neural network underpinning multiple visual features, perceptual knowledge, and feature integration, rather than solely focussing on colour-sensitive areas.