Learning rates of individuating information paired with faces varying in race

Abstract

Humans can rely on diverse sources of information to evaluate others, including person-knowledge (e.g., occupation, likes and dislikes, education, etc.) and perceptual cues (e.g., attractiveness, race, etc.). Our memory for others, and brain regions supporting impression formation, have been shown to depend on the characteristics of others (e.g., race), but are these memory biases a result of variability in exposure and person-knowledge valence? In study 1, White participants (n = 70) learned about Black and White men paired with either no information, exclusively positive person-knowledge, or exclusively negative person-knowledge then were tested on their memory. They completed five sessions of encoding and testing. Results reveal a robust advantage for White targets and differences in the benefit of person-knowledge training depending on the specificity of information recalled, such that participants were more accurate at recognizing faces paired with person-knowledge but less accurate when attributing the type of information compared to faces that were just perceptually familiar. In study 2 (n = 26), we seek to replicate and extend study 1 by examining the learning rates of person-knowledge over the five days and the neural correlates of race-based impression formation as a function of person-knowledge (i.e., DMPFC, VMPFC) and familiarity (i.e., precuneus). We additionally examined the impact of these factors on neural regions associated with general face perception and social salience (e.g., FFA, amygdala). We explore how learning rates are influenced by target race (Black, White) and knowledge type (positive, negative, none) and the individual differences that may shape our memory of others in an increasingly multi-racial environment.