Through the eyes of the own-race bias: Eye-tracking and pupillometry during face recognition

Abstract

People are generally better at remembering faces of their own race than faces of a different race, and this effect is known as the own-race bias (ORB) effect. We used eye-tracking and pupillometry to investigate whether Caucasian and Asian face stimuli elicited different-looking patterns in Caucasian participants in a face-memory task. Consistent with the ORB effect, we found better recognition performance for own-race faces than other-race faces, and shorter response times. In addition, at encoding, eye movements and pupillary responses to Asian faces (i.e., the other race) were different from those to Caucasian faces (i.e., the own race). Processing of own-race faces was characterized by more active scanning, with a larger number of shorter fixations, and more frequent saccades. Moreover, pupillary diameters were larger when viewing other-race than own-race faces, suggesting a greater cognitive effort when encoding other-race faces.

Keywords:

• Own-race bias
• Eye-tracking
• Pupillary response

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Behavioural Sciences Unit Research Grant from the Behavioural Sciences Unit at the Home Team Academy, Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore.

Notes

¹Note that these three variables are not independent. As the recording time of each trial during presentation and recognition was fixed at 5000 ms, a higher number of fixations would imply shorter average fixation duration, and a higher number of saccades.