Inconsistent individual personality description eliminates the other-race effect

The present study investigated the effect of individual semantic information displayed simultaneously with faces on the other-race effect. Arbitrary descriptions of the individual personalities of a set of faces were initially evaluated for consistency. Later, 83 naïve participants were allocated to three groups in which they saw faces and consistent, inconsistent, or neutral personality information about each face. Later, they completed a recognition task for the faces. The other-race effect was observed only in the control group and the consistent-information group, but not in the inconsistent-information group. This showed that inconsistent individual semantic information for each face can help to individuate these faces and eliminated the other-race effect. © 2011 Psychonomic Society, Inc.link_to_subscribed_fulltex