Department of Psychology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, 32816, USA.
Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA.
Psychol Res. 2021 Oct;85(7):2727-2741. doi: 10.1007/s00426-020-01420-2. Epub 2020 Oct 19.
Prior research indicates that stereotypical Black faces (e.g., wide nose, full lips) are perceived negatively relative to non-stereotypical faces (face-type bias). The current study investigated whether stereotypical faces may bias the interpretation of a neutral facial expression to seem threatening. Moreover, could biased responses be trained away with feedback? In two experiments, stimuli (face images) were presented in a speeded identification task that included corrective feedback, and participants indicated whether the face stimuli were stereotypical or not and threatening or not. Stimuli were pre-rated by face-type (stereotypical, non-stereotypical) and expression (neutral, threatening). Computational modeling based on General Recognition Theory indicated that training increased perceptual discriminability between all the faces. By the end of training (in both experiments), discriminability for emotional expression was slightly higher for stereotypical faces. Model parameters (for both experiments) also showed that, early in training, decision boundaries were more biased toward the threatening response for stereotypical faces relative to non-stereotypical faces. The results suggest that decision bias may be malleable with training.
先前的研究表明，相对于非刻板面孔（如窄鼻、薄唇），刻板的黑人面孔（宽鼻、厚唇）被认为是负面的（面孔类型偏见）。本研究探讨了刻板面孔是否会影响对中性表情的解读，使其看起来具有威胁性。此外，通过反馈能否改变有偏差的反应？在两项实验中，刺激（面部图像）在快速识别任务中呈现，包括纠正反馈，参与者需要指出面部刺激是刻板的还是非刻板的，以及是否具有威胁性。刺激物根据面孔类型（刻板、非刻板）和表情（中性、威胁）进行预评分。基于广义识别理论的计算模型表明，训练提高了所有面孔之间的感知辨别力。在训练结束时（两项实验均如此），对于刻板面孔，表情的辨别力略高于非刻板面孔。模型参数（两项实验）还表明，在训练早期，对于刻板面孔，相对于非刻板面孔，决策边界更偏向于威胁反应。结果表明，决策偏差可能通过训练而改变。
