Examining the Impact of Social and Perceptual Encoding Strategies on the Cross-Race Recognition Deficit

The cross-race recognition deficit (CRD) involves poorer recognition of faces perceived as cross-race compared to faces perceived as the same race. In this literature, research has examined social and perceptual encoding in the CRD separately. Recent research comparing these strategies shows that encoding faces based on social information (personality traits) enhances face recognition relative to encoding faces based on perceptual information (facial features), with a similar effect for both same-race and cross-race faces. Expanding on this research, we conducted three experiments (one pre-registered), manipulating the perception of face race within participants and using different social and perceptual encoding questions to examine their impacts on the CRD. Results showed that social encoding equally facilitated the recognition of faces perceived as same-race and cross-race replicating previous research (Experiment 1). However, perceptual encoding divergently impacted face recognition, improving cross-race but disrupting same-race (Experiment 2) or having comparable effects to standard encoding (Experiment 3). We discuss these findings and their implications for existing CRD theories.