Do We Visually Study Racially Ambiguous Faces the Same Way as Racially Unambiguous Faces?

Benjamin Uel Marsh, Ph.D., Psychology

This experiment investigates how participants’ fixation patterns may differ when cross-race faces are high in ethnic typicality (ET)—and therefore easy to identify as cross-race faces—compared to when they are low in ET and difficult to identify as cross-race faces. Participants studied 64 faces that varied by gender, race, and ET. Average fixation time and fixation count were calculated for the eyes, nose, and mouth of all the faces studied. Preliminary data from 17 European American participants showed that fixation patterns did not differ by race of face when the faces were low in ET. When the faces were high in ET, however, participants performed more fixations on the eyes of White faces than on those of Asian faces and Black faces. There was no difference in fixation count between White and Latino faces. The implications of these findings on factors that moderate the cross-race effect are discussed.