Corenblum, B., Meissner, Christina A., (2006). Recognition of ingroup and outgroup children and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 93, 187-206.
Eyewitness identification is an important aspect of legal proceedings, and more recent studies testing eyewitness memory have emerged. Eyewitness memory is crucial in identifying faces accurately even when they are asked to identify faces of other group members. It is important to take certain factors into consideration when asking eyewitnesses to identify other group members. This study focuses on the amount of intergroup contact, response bias, and the confidence levels of participants to determine how own-group biases play a role in accurately identifying faces.
Method
Participants were grouped according to grade level which ranged from grades 2 to 8 and also included introductory psychology college students. Age groups were broken down into grades 2 to 4, 5 to 6, 7 to 8, and the college students were classified as their own group. In Study 1 each group viewed 24 photographs of adults from African American and European American descent during encoding. Immediately following the slideshow, participants completed a 10 minute perceptual filler task. Then participants were tested with 48 photographs of African Americans and European Americans and asked to respond as old or new. Of the 48 presented during test 16 were chosen to rate confidence level. Participants judged confidence on a 5-point scale where 1 = not really sure at all and 5 = completely sure. If face space theory is accurate then photographs of outgroup adults should create a “they all look the same to me” effect and participants should have a higher false alarm rate when recognizing outgroup members than ingroup members.
Study 2 was much like Study 1 except participants were asked to recognize faces of children belonging to 3 different group memberships: African Americans, European Americans, and Native Canadians. The same grade levels from Study 1 were used in Study 2 as well. Participants viewed 24 photographs of 7-10 year olds at encoding (8 gender-balanced photographs from each group). During the recognition phase or test phase 54 new (not previously seen) photographs (18 from each group membership) and 18 previously viewed photographs were presented. Again, participants judged confidence, but unlike Study 1 participants were asked to indicate the amount of interaction they had with outgroup members in a week using a 5-point scale (5 = 3+ and 1 = never). They were also asked to describe the nature of this contact on a 4-point scale (4 = best friends and 1 = Ok kids).
Results
Discrimination accuracy and response bias
Confidence & Confidence
accuracy relations
· Study 1 showed greater confidence for previously seen outgroup members than ingroup members for both studies.
· There were higher levels of confidence reported for new ingroup members than for new outgroup members.
· Grade school children were more confident than the young adults.
· Grade school children were also more accurate in correctly rejecting ingroup members vs. outgroup members.
· Results from Study 2 show a diagnostic relationship between accuracy and confidence in young adults but was reversed for grades 2 to 4.
Intergroup contact
· Results for Study 2 show a positive but insignificant relationship between contact and false alarms.
· Results showed a negative relationship between amount of contact and number of hits.
Discussion
These two studies show relationships between grade levels and group memberships for confidence, discrimination accuracy, and response bias. It seems that as grade level increased participants were more likely to use a liberal response criterion for both ingroup members and outgroup members. Confidence for young adults was also more accurate in predicting a correct response. This finding, however, was the opposite for the youngest category of participants. Although intergroup contact showed some significant relationships the results were inconsistent with the predictions of contact theory. Both findings from Study 1 and Study 2 match up with Valentine’s multidimensional face space theory and perceptual learning theories which says that constant exposure to ingroup faces results in knowing how and what dimensions to use for accurately recalling faces they know well.
Important Legal
Disclaimer: The preceding are articles we read together in the Lampinen Lab
Fall 2006 false memory reading group. By clicking on the authors’ names of each
article you can see the summary of that article. The summary was prepared by
the student presenting that article and it is of course the case that the views
expressed in the summary do not necessarily represent the views of the reading
group as a whole, Dr. Lampinen, the Lampinen Lab, the University of Arkansas,
the Razorback Football or Basketball teams (although we're not sure about cross
country), people living down the street from us, Bob Dylan, Jack Fate, our
extended families, or anyone else for that matter except for the student who
wrote the summary (and they don't necessarily believe what they wrote either).