CROSS-RACE EFFECT
EXTERNAL Motivation to control prejudice as a moderator of the CRE
AUTHORS
Matthew Baldwin, Kathleen Morton, Michael Bernstein and Kurt Hugenberg
BACKGROUND
Our research titled, “Making Prejudice Salient: Motivation to Control Prejudice and the CRE” investigated the cross-race effect (CRE), a phenomenon whereby people tend to recognize same-race faces (SR) better than cross-race (CR) faces (Goldstein & Chance, 1996, Meissner & Brigham, 2001). Past research has indicated that this phenomenon occurs for all races and is not related to participant prejudice.
HYPOTHESIS
With the understanding that White participants categorize CR faces in the absence of instructions to do otherwise, we predicted that informing people that racial prejudice was the cause of the CRE would significantly decrease CR face recognition due to increased categorization.However, we predicted that this would only occur for those highly motivated to control for racial prejudice.
DESIGN
We engaged in a 2 Target Race (White, Black) x 2 Instructions (Prejudice Induction, Control) x 2 External MCRP (High, Low) mixed model design. Forty-three white male and female students participated in the study. All participants were shown 40 faces (20 White, 20 Black) during encoding, performed a filler task, and then saw 80 faces (40 old, 40 new) and were asked to identify which they had previously seen. Participants in the experimental condition were given erroneous information regarding the cause of the CRE prior to the face memory task. This information stated that lower recognition of cross-race faces indicated higher racial prejudice. Participants in the control condition received no information regarding the CRE prior to the task. External MCRP was measured at the end of the study.
RESULTS
A 2x2x2 ANOVA was conducted and revealed a significant 3-way interaction between Target Race, Instructions, and External Motivation, F (1,39) = 4.065, p = .05. We decomposed this 3-way interaction into two separate two-way interactions split by high and low external MCRP. Among individuals low in external MCRP, no interaction occurred (p>.90) and only a main effect of the CRE was found (p = .50). However, for high external MCRP participants, a significant interaction was present, F (1,21) = 10.405, p<.01; control condition participants had greater d’ for White targets (M = 1.294) than for Black targets (M=.980) but this difference was exacerbated among participants hearing the prejudice induction instructions (White M=1.837, Black M=.683).
AWARDS
We received an Undergraduate Presentation Award to attend the Association for Psychological Science May 22-25, 2009 in San Francisco.
POSTER PRESENTATIONS
Baldwin, M., Morton, K., Bernstein, M. J., & Hugenberg, K. (2009, May). Making prejudice salient: External motivation to control prejudice and the CRE. Poster to be presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Psychological Science, San Francisco, CA.
Baldwin, M., Morton, K., Bernstein, M. J., & Hugenberg, K. (2009, May). External Motivation to Control Prejudice as a Moderator of the CRE. Poster to be presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.
Baldwin, M., Morton, K., Bernstein, M., Hugenberg, K. (2008, February). Prejudice, Categorization, and Individuation: Motivation to control prejudice as a moderator of the cross-race effect. Poster presented at the TriState APA Preparing Future Faculty Symposium at Miami University, Ohio.
Morton, K., Baldwin, M., Bernstein, M. J., & Hugenberg, K. (2009, April). Prejudice and the CRE. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Miami University Steven Hinkle Memorial Poster Session, Oxford, OH.