Abstract
People are more likely to falsely identify a face of another race than a face of their own race. When witnesses make identifications, they often need to remember where they have previously encountered a face. Failure to remember the context of an encounter can result in unconscious transference and lead to misidentifications. Forty-five White participants were shown White and Black faces, each presented on one of five backgrounds. The participants had to identify these faces in an old/new recognition test. If participants stated that they had seen a face, they had to identify the context in which the face had originally appeared. Participants made more context errors with Black faces than with White faces. This shows that the own-race bias extends to context memory.
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This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
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Horry, R., Wright, D.B. I know your face but not where I saw you: Context memory is impaired for other-race faces. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 15, 610–614 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.3.610
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.3.610