Mixed Race Studies

A Foot in Both Worlds: Asian Americans’ Perceptions of Asian, White, and Racially Ambiguous Faces

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations
Volume 11, Number 2 (April 2008)
pages 182–200
DOI: 10.1177/1368430207088037

Eve C. Willadsen-Jensen
University of Colorado, Boulder

Tiffany A. Ito, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
University of Colorado, Boulder

Past research on racial perception has often focused on responses from White participants, making it difficult to determine the role of perceiver race in the perception of others. Similarly, studies examining perceptions of individuals whose racial category membership is unclear have not systematically examined responses from non-Whites. This was addressed by showing Asian participants pictures of Whites, Asians, and racially ambiguous White-Asian faces. Event-related potentials were recorded to measure early attention responses. Participants initially oriented more to outgroup White than ingroup Asian or racially ambiguous faces. Shortly after that, they showed sensitivity to the racial context in which the faces were presented, more deeply processing ingroup Asian and racially ambiguous faces when they were seeing lots of other Asians, but more deeply processing outgroup White and racially ambiguous faces when they were seeing lots of other Whites. Still later, responses were more sensitive to the objective physical properties of the faces, with racially ambiguous faces differentiated from both Whites and Asians. These results demonstrate the fluidity of racial processing, and when compared to responses obtained from White participants, show how perceiver race and racial context influences attention to racial cues.

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What’s Black and White and Black Or White?: The Effects of Category Assignment on the Evaluation of and Memory for Multi-raced Faces

University of Colorado
2007
85 pages
ISBN: 9780549508632

Eve C. Willadsen-Jensen

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Psychology

This paper examines the effect of social categorization, from the initial category assignment to perceiver evaluations and memory, on a racially ambiguous target. In a series of 3 studies, racial categorization at the initial stage of person perception was manipulated by providing a race cue prior to viewing racially-ambiguous faces. The studies demonstrated that categorization of an ambiguous target lead to differences in the initial processing of the face as well as evaluation and memory. Racially ambiguous faces were evaluated in a manner consistent with the race cue. In Studies 1 and 2, racially ambiguous faces cued with the word “Black” primed more biased responses than racially ambiguous faces cued with the word “White”. This difference was reflected in participants’ event-related potentials (Study 2) with larger initial attention to faces primed by “Black” followed by a shift in attention to faces primed by “White”. This pattern was for both ambiguous and unambiguous faces. The pattern continued into memory effects (Study 3) with better memory for “White” than “Black” cued faces. These results demonstrate how initial category assignment during early face processing affects the entire person perception process.

Purchase the dissertation here.

Ambiguity and the Timecourse of Racial Perception

Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic
Volume 24, Number 5 (October 2006)
pages 580-606
DOI: 10.1521/soco.2006.24.5.580

Eve C. Willadsen-Jensen
University of Colorado, Boulder

Tiffany A. Ito, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
University of Colorado, Boulder

Two studies examined early perceptual processing and explicit racial categorization of racially ambiguous faces. Participants viewed racially ambiguous faces as well as faces of Whites, Asians, and Blacks while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Initial perceptual processes, indexed by ERP components occurring within 200 ms [milliseconds]  of stimulus onset, showed that racially ambiguous faces were differentiated from Asian and Black but not White faces. Later in processing, around 500 ms after stimulus onset, racially ambiguous faces were differentiated from White faces. However, the racially ambiguous faces were still perceived more similarly to Whites than to Asians or Blacks. Finally, explicit social categorization reflected the ambiguity of the faces. These results highlight the complex nature of racial perception, and the importance of understanding how the growing population of multiracial individuals is perceived.

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