FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY
RACE AND EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY
It has been posited in several studies on eyewitness testimony and identification that individuals are better able to recognize individuals of their own race rather than others. This is referred to as Cross Race Effect (CRE). It is also known as own-race bias or other-race effect. In a relatively recent study, Kassin and colleagues (2001) found that 90 % of the experts surveyed felt that empirical evidence of the CRE was reliable enough to be presented in court.
CROSS RACE EFFECT
CRE research tends to use is the lineup paradigm where participants are made to witness an event (either live or via videotape) and thus become witnesses. They notice the target person or perpetrator in the event and are later asked to participate in a lineup identification in which the target person may or may not be present. Meissner and Brigham (2001) found in a metanalysis that the CRE was observed reliably in both correct identifications and false identifications.
PROCESSES THAT AFFECT THE CRE
Individuals may have less contact with individuals of other races which results in an inability to recognize faces of other races.
One of the earliest theorists to mention the possible involvement of contact in the CRE was Feingold (1914), who asserted “all other things being equal, individuals of a given race are distinguishable from each other in proportion to our familiarity, to our contact with the race as a whole”. The contact perspective suggests that positive attitudes toward other racial groups i.e. positive intergroup contact should be positively correlated with the ability to recognize members of that group (see Meissner & Brigham, 2001). Also, it can be speculated that negative intergroup attitudes could motivate one to avoid contact or to limit contact to very superficial interactions with members of the disliked group, thereby constraining the opportunity to develop expertise in distinguishing between other-race faces (Chance & Goldstein, 1996).
Thus, if an individual has little to no contact with other racial groups whatsoever, then yes they will not be able to identify faces of other races in a lineup.
Individuals may pay less attention to members of other races thus leading to cognitively disregarding other race members.
Rodin (1987) gave the term cognitive disregard wherein she proposed that people may try to conserve their resources by paying more attention to those individuals who are part of their in-group. In this strategy, some strangers (out-group members) are recognized and categorized only on a superficial level, say race. So in this case, out-group members might be categorized and later recognized at a very superficial level whereas people of in-group are recognized at an in-depth level which makes it easier to recognize faces of the same race.
Individuals may use different cognitive processes for evaluating individuals of other races than for the same race.
Researchers proposed that same-race faces would be cognitively processed at a deeper level, leading to better subsequent recognition (Chance & Goldstein, 1981); however, the most consistent finding appears to be that shallow-processing instructions impair memory for all faces, regardless of race (Chance & Goldstein, 1996). Hence, it might be wise to say that perhaps people try to encode members of the same group on a deeper level (in-group) because of regular contact which makes it easier for them to recognize them. The opposite is true for members of other races.
References
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Brigham, J. C., Bennett, L. B., Meissner, C. A., & Mitchell, T. L. (2007). The influence of race on eyewitness memory. In R. C. L. Lindsay, D. F. Ross, J. D. Read, & M. P. Toglia (Eds.), The handbook of eyewitness psychology, Vol. 2. Memory for people (pp. 257–281). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
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Chance, J. E., & Goldstein, A. G. (1981). Depth of processing in response to own and other-race faces. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 7, 475–480.
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Chance, J., & Goldstein, A. (1996). The other-race effect and eyewitness identification. In S. L. Sporer, R. Malpass, & G. Koehnken (Eds.), Psychological issues in eyewitness identification (pp. 153–176). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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Feingold, G. A. (1914). The influence of environment on the identification of persons and things. Journal of Criminal Law and Political Science, 5, 39–51.
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Kassin, S. M., Tubb, V. A., Hosch, H. M., & Memon, A. (2001). On the “General Acceptance” of eyewitness testimony research: A new survey of the experts. American Psychologist, 56, 405–416.
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Meissner, C. A., & Brigham, J. C. (2001). Thirty years of investigating the other-race effect in memory for faces: A meta-analytic review. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 7, 3–35
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Rodin, M. J. (1987). Who is memorable to whom? A study of cognitive disregard. Social Cognition, 5, 144–165.
