研究: 异族面孔分类中情绪的调节作用

人们对异族面孔的分类绩效比本族面孔更好,这称作异族分类优势.但面孔异族分类优势是否也和面孔异族效应一样受到情绪的调节作用,尚未可知.本文通过两个实验考察情绪对于面孔种族分类任务的影响.实验一要求40名大学生被试对不同表情面孔(中性,负性,正性)完成种族判断任务,结果发现,正性和负性情绪使年轻人对异族面孔分类变得更慢,削弱了面孔异族分类优势,而且正性情绪对异族分类效应影响更大.实验二以不同情绪加工特点的老年人为被试,发现老年人对负性异族面孔的分类绩效明显更差,负性情绪对异族分类优势的影响更大.这些结果为异族分类优势理论中,异族面孔分类和个体身份加工过程相互制约的潜在假设提供了进一步的支持.

Review: Modulation of Facial Expression on Other-race Face Categorization

When faces are categorized by their race, participants often respond faster and more accurately to other-race faces than to own-race faces, and this is known as other-race categorization advantage. It has been evident for enhanced recognition of other-race faces with positive or negative emotions, but it remains unclear whether categorization of other-race faces receive similar impact from emotions. This study was to examine how emotions modualtes the categorization of other-race faces. Experiment 1 asked young participants to categorize faces with neutral, positive or negative expressions by their race, and found both positive and negative expressions slowed down the categorization of other-race faces and weakened the other-race categorization advantage. Experiment 2 recruited elders to judge the race of faces, and found they categorized other-race faces more slower, and the other-race categorization advantage was weakened by negative expressions to a greater extent for elders than for youngers. These results provided further evidence for the hypothesis of the competition between individual identity process and categorization process, which was a common implication of several theories on other-race categorization advantage.