Effects of allocation of attention on initial racial face discrimination

Abstract: Utilizing a modified version of the affect misattribution procedure, event-related brain potentials of 32 Caucasian participants were examined in order to study the effects of allocation of attention on early racial face perception and discrimination. When attention was directed away from faces, towards ambiguous non-face stimuli, larger N1s, peaking at approximately 110 ms after stimulus onset, were observed for faces from participants‟ outgroup as compared to N1s for faces from participants‟ ingroup, peaking approximately 114 ms after stimulus onset. When attention was directed towards face stimuli no difference in N1 amplitude was observed. Conversely, N2s observed were larger for participants‟ ingroup when attention was directed towards faces as well as non-faces. Results suggest that allocation of attention appears to have an effect on the early time-course of racial face discrimination.