January 2010 - December 2012
budget resources of KMRC
This project investigated the potential for and consequences of cross-group recognition bias (better memory for people who share ethnic or social group memberships with a perceiver than for people who do not share ethnic or social group memberships with a perceiver) when personal identity can be represented in the diverse forms afforded by electronic communication. Previously, cross-group recognition bias has been treated exclusively as a face recognition bias.
In this research, we found that recognition bias extends to non-face representations of digital identity, including diverse pictorial representations of identity and written verbal representations of identity (Ray & Matschke, 2012). Hence, recognition bias can occur even in virtual environments where individuals are often represented by icons etc. rather than pictures of their faces.