Social identity threat attenuates own-race bias in face recognition under the “Asian-Caucasian” context

People typically remember faces of their own race better than the faces of other races, which is known as the own-race bias. Social-cognitive theories on the own-race bias debate if motivation plays a role in racial face recognition under the “Asian-Caucasian” context. We investigated the effect of social-identity-threat based motivation on own-race bias. In Experiment 1, Chinese participants were primed with a negative image of own-race by associating Chinese (i.e., own-race) faces with negative personality traits. Results showed that such social identity threat marginally affect the own-race bias in face recognition sensitivity (Experiment 1a), and it did not influence participants' implicit positive attitudes toward their ethnicity (Experiment 1b). In Experiments 2, 3 and 4, the social identity threat was manipulated by reading an article before the face recognition task. Experiment 2 found that the social identity threat significantly affected the own-race bias in face recognition false alarm. Although we did not find the modulation effect of group on ORB with ANOVA in Experiments 3 and 4, we observed the significant indirect effect of group on ORB through the mediator of generalized threat. Together, the current study provides evidence of social motivation in the own-race bias in the “Asian-Caucasian” setting.