Description of White and Black Faces by White and Black Subjects

Abstract

A previous experiment by Shepherd, Deregowski and Ellis (1974) showed that white subjects are better at remembering white faces than black faces, and that black subjects are superior at recognizing black compared with white faces. The present experiment was designed to investigate the frequencies with which white and black subjects use different facial features when describing faces. It was found that black and white subjects did differ in their descriptions of faces, which was interpreted as reflecting differences in attention to the various aspects of facial detail. The difference in attention deployment is suggested as a possible basis for the earlier reported differences in recognition memory for white and black faces by white and black subjects.