A field study of own-race bias in South Africa and England.

By D. Wright, Catherine E. Boyd, Colin Tredoux. 2001

103 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In shopping centers in South Africa and England, Black and White people were approached by either a Black or a White confederate. Later they were asked to identify the confederate from both a sequential lineup, where photographs are seen one at a time, and a forced-choice recognition test, where photographs are seen simultaneously. In both countries and with both identification tasks the confederates were better recognized by people of their own race. By observing this own-race bias in two countries with different demographics, using methods similar to those used in some criminal investigations of eyewitness memory, the authors demonstrated the robust nature of the own-race bias. In addition, witness confidence and accuracy were found to be correlated but only when the participant was the same race as the confederate. Implications for legal procedure are discussed.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3d73fc7b327eb25d7b51d799e435d269d068211f

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

Recognizing faces of other ethnic groups: An integration of theories. (2001, background): “For example, in European Champion League soccer teams, an increasing number of players of internationally diverse backgrounds are represented, including a large number of Black African players (Wright, Boyd, & Tredoux, 2000).”
The Influence of Race on Eyewitness Memory (2007, background): “nature of confidence in other-race identifications (Meissner et al., 2005; Smith et al., 2004; Wright et al., 2001), we recommend additional caution in relying upon postidentification confidence statements provided by other-race witnesses.”
Inter-racial Contact and the Own-race Bias for Face Recognition in South Africa and England (2003, methodology): “Previously we have compared ORB in South Africa and England (Wright et al., 2001), specifically because of their different racial demographics.”