Invisible own- and other-race faces presented under continuous flash suppression produce affective response biases

Conscious Cogn. 2017 Feb:48:273-282. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2016.12.012. Epub 2017 Jan 6.

Abstract

One triumph of the human mind is the ability to place the multitudinous array of people we encounter into in- and out-group members based on racial characteristics. One fundamental question that remains to be answered is whether invisible own- and other-race faces can nevertheless influence subsequent affective judgments. Here, we employed continuous flash suppression (CFS) to render own- and other-race faces unperceivable in an affective priming task. Both on-line and off-line awareness checks were employed to provide more stringent control of partial awareness. Results revealed that relative to own-race faces, imperceptible other-race faces significantly facilitated participants' identification of negative words, suggesting an other-race derogation bias. When faces were presented consciously, we found that not only other-race faces facilitated detection of negative words, but also own-race faces facilitated detection of positive words. These findings together provide novel and strong evidence suggesting that invisible racial faces can bias affective responses.

Keywords: Affective priming; Continuous flash suppression; Interocular suppression; Unconsciousness.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Affect / physiology*
  • Consciousness / physiology*
  • Facial Recognition / physiology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Perceptual Masking / physiology*
  • Racism / psychology*
  • Repetition Priming / physiology*
  • Young Adult