Graduation Term

2023

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Department of Psychology

Committee Chair

Dawn McBride

Abstract

Emotional expression, race, and length of time between initially seeing the face and subsequent recognition potentially contribute to face recognition. In this study, race and emotional expression of the facial stimuli, and time delay between study and test were manipulated. A sample of 91 participants was recruited from Illinois State University. Participants completed a study session and two test phases evaluating facial recognition performance of racially Black and White facial stimuli. Target images from the RADIATE face stimulus set (Conley et al., 2018; Tottenham et al., 2009) were used in this study. Faces were presented with either a happy or angry emotional expression. Participants experienced both no time delay and a 15 min delay between study and test to assess short-term and long-term recognition. A significant main effect of time delay was found with higher recognition at the immediate test than after the 15 min delay. A significant main effect of emotion was found with higher recognition for angry emotional expressions than happy expressions. Lastly, a significant two-way interaction was found for facial stimuli race and emotional expression; angry White faces had higher recognition than the other three conditions. However, the predicted delay by expression interaction was not found. These results are discussed in the context of racial demographic, the cross-race effect (CRE), and WEIRD samples.

Access Type

Thesis-Open Access

DOI

https://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2022.20230207065834905042.999981

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