Avoidance of intergroup contact and its connection to attitudinal and recognition bias against ethnic minorities – AvoidContact

Introduction and rationale. The literature on inter-ethnic recognition bias (the difficulty of recognizing persons belonging to an ethnic outgroup) is consistent. A meta-analysis by Meissner and Brigham (2001), reviewing a base of ?5,000 participants, showed that the intra-ethnic recognition advantage is a factor of 1.4, and the inter-ethnic recognition deficit a factor of 1.5. We have recently confirmed the stability of these effects for articles published after 2001 in our own laboratory. The implications of this recognition deficit for criminal justice are profound. Many researchers believe this bias is due to lack of contact with ethnic outgroups. This is a conjecture about perceptual learning, but we believe the bias is also a function of social interaction: interactions between members of ethnic groups lead to both perceptual and social outcomes, and these are co-dependent. Low contact frequency of poor quality is known to increase perceived threat, and intergroup anxiety, and we believe this leads to avoidance of contact. We expect that this leads to greater prejudice, and to poorer inter-ethnic recognition. Such a process is likely to be dynamic, with the inability to distintinguish individuals from another ethnic group reinforcing the process negatively. Research on face recognition has recently made some efforts to consider socio-cognitive factors but has not in our view sufficiently integrated the two interlinked chains of effects.

Objectives. We propose empirical work centred on three experiments. These address links between prejudice, intergroup anxiety, avoidance of contact with members of the ethnic outgroup, and the face recognition deficit for individuals from outgroups. In the final experiment we include an additional element reflecting the heterogeneity of outgroups, and test for the presence of an ensuing ‘phenotypicality bias’ in both social attitudes and face recognition abilities.

Method. In the first experiment participants will interact with targets of European, North African or African origin, presented as having threatening, or friendly emotional expressions. The impact of this manipulation on intergroup anxiety will be checked, and the effects of the hypothesized anxiety on subsequent target recognition will be studied, along with hypothesized effects on perceived threat, contact avoidance, and prejudice. The second experiment will simplify the same procedure, using eye-tracking technology to study the perceptual processes that are implicated in the chain of effects that proceed from induced intergroup anxiety to recognition deficits, and attitudinal hostility. The final experiment will focus on ‘racial phenotypicality bias’. We will study the impact of Afrocentricity, Arabcentricity and Eurocentricity on the chain of variables outlined above, and the consequences for both face recognition and attitudinal hostility.

Discussion. This project articulates distinct perspectives on inter-group relations: a psychosocial perspective on threats perceived as coming from inter-ethnic encounters, and a perceptual and cognitive perspective on face recognition of outgroups. We propose that the process of recognizing faces interacts with prejudice and contact anxiety in a circular manner. For ingroup members, outgroup individuals appear to be difficult to distinguish from each other, leading to anxiety about possible interaction, especially when there is prejudice against the outgroup. This perceptual difficulty will in part reinforce avoidance of intergroup contact and/or poor quality social interactions, fueling negative attitudes, and since outgroup faces must be learnt in large part through interaction, the process is circular and self-defeating. An underlying objective of this project will therefore be to identify the mechanisms of this process, with the long-term prospect of designing training programs that reduce own race bias and improve the quality of intergroup relations on the micro-scale.