Cross-Race Effect in Eyewitness Identification

Laboratory Studies of the CRE

Research in cognitive and social psychology over a span of three decades has examined the CRE, providing a substantial body of work demonstrating the reliability and robustness of the effect. The vast majority of the research has focused on individuals' attempts to identify both own-race and other-race faces. Across studies, a “mirror effect” pattern is generally observed, such that individuals demonstrate both significantly greater correct identifications of own-race faces (referred to as “hits”) and significantly fewer false identifications of own-race faces (referred to as “false alarms”). Overall, participants are 1.40 times more likely to correctly identify an own-race face, while they are 1.56 times more likely to falsely identify an other-race face. Composite signal detection measures of discrimination accuracy (i.e., the ability to distinguish between faces seen previously and novel faces) and response criterion (i.e., the tendency for responding “yes” versus “no” to faces regardless of whether they have been seen before or not) have also been used to describe the CRE. As might be expected, discrimination accuracy is better for own-race faces, and individuals generally demonstrate a more liberal response criterion for other-race faces (indicating that they are more likely to say “seen before” to such faces).

Several factors have been shown to moderate the CRE. For example, studies have shown that shorter viewing times are more likely to produce the effect such that under brief encoding conditions performance is superior on own-race faces. As viewing time increases, however, the CRE reduces in size such that performance can become equivalent on own-race and other-race faces with a sufficient opportunity for encoding. Retention interval, or the time between stimulus presentation and test, has also been shown to moderate the effect. Studies indicate that as the retention interval increases, participants' response criterion becomes more liberal for other-race faces, thereby producing a CRE on measures of response criterion. As such, participants are more willing to identify other-race faces (i.e., to respond “seen before”) when a lengthy delay occurs between study and test phases.

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