Relative Distinctiveness and Face Recognition Biases

Face recognition biases occur when in-group (people with similar characteristics to the perceiver) faces are remembered better than out-group faces (Sporer, 2001). These biases have been observed for physical factors (e.g., race, age, gender) as well as psychological/social factors (e.g., occupation status; Ratcliff et al., 2011). Relative distinctiveness also affects face recognition such that atypical faces are better remembered than typical faces (e.g., Valentine, 1991). The Featural Fan Effect (e.g., Reder et al., 2002) can create stimuli that are relatively distinct without relying on atypicality, but rather by manipulating the number of items that share a given feature. In Experiment 1, we tested the effects of a psychological/social factor (occupation status) by labeling faces with a high- or low-status occupation, as well as the Featural Fan Effect by manipulating the number of times a given eye region appeared with faces. Curiously, there was no effect of occupation status, but a healthy effect of fan such that faces that did not share an eye region were better remembered than faces that did share an eye region. Since better memory for faces labeled with high-status occupations compared to low-status occupations has previously been reported (Ratcliff et al.), in Experiments 2a-2g we tested several psychological/social factors and compared them to two physical factors (age and gender) known to elicit face recognition biases. Although own-age and own-gender recognition biases occurred for the physical factors, we found no evidence to support differential memory based on group membership for psychological/social factors. Therefore, in Experiment 3, we once again tested the Featural Fan Effect by manipulating the number of times that an eye region was shared by faces, but this time used a physical factor of age (own-age: younger adult vs other-age: older adult). The results showed main effects of fan such that low-fan faces were better remembered than high-fan faces and of age such that own-age faces were remembered better than other-age faces. However, there was no interaction: the Featural Fan Effect did not moderate the effect of the own-age bias. The results are discussed within the frameworks of major models of face recognition biases.