Culture moderates the relationship between interdependence and face recognition.

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Abstract

Recent theory suggests that face recognition accuracy is affected by people’smotivations, with people being particularly motivated to remember ingroup versusoutgroup faces. In the current research we suggest that those higher in interdependenceshould have a greater motivation to remember ingroup faces, but this should depend onhow ingroups are defined. To examine this possibility, we used a joint individual differenceand cultural approach to test (a) whether individual differences in interdependence wouldpredict face recognition accuracy, and (b) whether this effect would be moderated byculture. In Study 1 European Canadians higher in interdependence demonstrated greaterrecognition for same-race (White), but not cross-race (East Asian) faces. In Study 2we found that culture moderated this effect. Interdependence again predicted greaterrecognition for same-race (White), but not cross-race (East Asian) faces among EuropeanCanadians; however, interdependence predicted worse recognition for both same-race(East Asian) and cross-race (White) faces among first-generation East Asians. The resultsprovide insight into the role of motivation in face perception as well as cultural differencesin the conception of ingroups.

Citation

Ng, A. H., Steele, J. R., Sasaki, J. Y., Sakamoto, Y., & Williams, A. (2015). Culture moderates the relationship between interdependence and face recognition. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 1620.

Bibtext Entry

@article{ng2015culture,
  title={Culture moderates the relationship between interdependence and face recognition},
  author={Ng, Andy H and Steele, Jennifer R and Sasaki, Joni Y and Sakamoto, Yumiko and Williams, Amanda},
  journal={Frontiers in psychology},
  volume={6},
  pages={1620},
  year={2015},
  publisher={Frontiers}
}