Lateral Differences in the Race Effect in Face Recognition

Abstract

In experimental psychology, the difficulty people have in discriminating or recognizing faces of people not included in their own ethnic group is called the “race effect.” A survey of the literature reveals several hypotheses and it is suggested that a neuropsychological investigation of the race effect could help clarify the situation. In this preliminary study, black (N=8) and white (N=16) right-handed subjects were given the task of recognizing black an white faces, laterally displayed in the right or left visual field for 180 msec. The race effect was observed for white people for stimuli displayed in the right field only. Some hypotheses of experimental psychology are reconsidered in the light of these results.