Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA, USA.
Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2024 Oct 8;9(1):68. doi: 10.1186/s41235-024-00597-z.
Searching for missing or wanted people is a crucial task in our society. Previous work on prospective person memory (PPM) has demonstrated that performance on this type of search task is worse relative to standard prospective memory tasks. Importantly, this process may be further affected by the race of the missing person, yet this has never been tested in laboratory settings. To test the effects of race on PPM, a convenience sample consisting primarily of self-identified Caucasian participants was asked to search for either a Caucasian or an Indian target person while judging the orientation of different Caucasian and Indian faces. Although the tasks were otherwise identical, 89% of Caucasian PPM targets were found while only 53% of Indian targets were found. Furthermore, relative to a control group with no PPM requirements, participants were slower and more error-prone when judging Indian faces relative to White faces, particularly if they were searching for an Indian face. We interpret these results as revealing other-race effects in prospective person memory, highlighting race as a critical factor for finding missing people. Importantly, this also emphasizes the need for real-world search efforts to factor in difficulty differences when people monitor for missing/wanted people from their own or different racial backgrounds. For example, media coverage of missing persons cases could perhaps be distributed more equitably by considering whether the missing person is from a racial minority in that region.
寻找失踪或被通缉的人是我们社会的一项关键任务。以前关于前瞻性记忆（PPM）的研究表明，这种搜索任务的表现相对标准前瞻性记忆任务更差。重要的是，这个过程可能会受到失踪者种族的进一步影响，但这在实验室环境中从未得到过测试。为了测试种族对 PPM 的影响，一个方便的样本主要由自认为是白种人的参与者组成，要求他们在判断不同白种人和印度面孔的方向的同时搜索白种人或印度目标人物。尽管这些任务在其他方面都是相同的，但 89%的白种人 PPM 目标被找到，而只有 53%的印度目标被找到。此外，与没有 PPM 要求的对照组相比，参与者在判断印度面孔相对于白人面孔时速度更慢，错误更多，尤其是当他们在寻找印度面孔时。我们将这些结果解释为揭示了前瞻性人物记忆中的异族效应，突出了种族是寻找失踪人员的关键因素。重要的是，这也强调了在现实世界中进行搜索时，需要考虑到当人们从自己或不同的种族背景中寻找失踪/被通缉的人时，监测的难度差异。例如，失踪人员案件的媒体报道可以通过考虑失踪人员是否来自该地区的少数民族，更公平地进行分配。
