Abstract
Forms of racial cognition begin early: from about 3 months onwards, many human infants prefer to look at own-race faces over other-race faces. What is not yet fully clear is what the psychological mechanisms are that underlie racial thoughts at this early age, and why these mechanisms evolved. In this paper, we propose answers to these questions. Specifically, we use recent experimental data and evolutionary biological insights to argue that early racial cognition is simply the result of a “facial familiarity mechanism”: a mental structure that leads infants to attend to faces that look similar to familiar faces, and which probably has evolved to track potential caregivers. We further argue that this account can be combined with the major existing treatments of the evolution of racial cognition, which apply to (near-) adult humans. The result is a heterogeneous picture of racial thought, according to which early and later racial cognition result from very different psychological mechanisms.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A word about the term “race”: we do not think that this term picks out a meaningful natural—as opposed to socially constructed—kind (for some supporting arguments, see, e.g., Appiah 1992, 1996; Haslanger 2012). What the research surveyed in this section shows, therefore, is that infants show preferences that range over a purely socially constructed kind. See also note 13.
While this lability thus decreases with age, there is evidence that it remains relatively strong even into adulthood: for instance, Kurzban et al. (2001) were able to deflate the tendency to categorize by race in adults simply by exposing them to an alternate social world for about 4 min.
Similarly, Kelly et al. (2007b) found that while 3-month-old Caucasian infants could discriminate other-race faces (i.e. African, Middle Eastern, and Chinese), 6-month-old infants could only discriminate Caucasian and Chinese faces, and 9-month-old infants only discriminated among own-race faces. Note that infants also need time to acquire the ability to distinguish the identity of faces (e.g. Chien et al. (2016)). Still, what matters here is just that, with more exposure to own-race faces and little exposure to other-race faces, infants cease to have the ability to recognize other-race faces while they retain their ability to recognize own-race faces.
We use the term “byproduct” in the sense standard in evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology: as traits that have evolved not because they have been specifically selected for, but because they are connected to other traits that have been selected for. Relatedly, it is useful to note that Hirschfeld (1996) and Kurzban et al. (2001) refer to modules as characterized by the massive modularity hypothesis (Carruthers 2006), rather than Fodor’s (1983) notion of a module. For more on both of these points, see e.g. Tooby and Cosmides (1992) and Buss et al. (1998).
A quick remark about nativism and learning is useful here. These accounts combine nativist and empiricist elements: they posit the existence of innate structures that facilitate the learning of certain facts—namely, facts about the prevailing coalitions, social groups, or ethnies.
A version of this idea is also being hinted at in Pascalis and Kelly (2009), D. J. Kelly et al. (2005), Bar-Haim et al. (2006), and Sangrigoli and De Schonen (2004) (among others). However, these other publications are first and foremost experimental papers, and they do not spell out in any detail an account of the evolution of infant racial cognition.
Further relevant here are the findings concerning “face blindness” (see, e.g., Damasio et al. 1982; Farah et al. 1995), which also suggest that humans track faces in a way that is quite different from how they track other shapes and objects. Moreover, a face selective electrophysiological activity has been observed in event-related potential (ERP) studies, which is particular to human face stimuli and has been observed neither for animal faces (de Haan et al. 2002) nor for objects (Rossion et al. 2000).
Interestingly, Quinn et al. (2008) further found that racial facial preferences trump gender-based facial preferences: 3-month-old Caucasian infants who were reared by Caucasian caregivers were shown to prefer female over male Caucasian faces, but did not show any preference of female over male Asian faces. See below for more on this.
This is also supported by the Liu et al. (2015) studies: although 3-month-old infants look longer at own-race faces, 9-month-olds look longer at other-race faces. This suggests that infants’ visual preferences shift from familiarity preferences (for own-race faces) to novelty preferences (for other-races) as they grow up. This is in line with previous work with nonface objects, which demonstrated that infants have a tendency to shift their preferences from a familiar to a novel stimulus with increasing exposure to the familiar stimulus (Houston-Price and Nakai 2004). Underlying these findings is thus the fact that infants group faces into “familiar” and “unfamiliar” classes.
There is some comparative psychological evidence that is worth mentioning here, though. Sugita (2008) conducted a deprivation study with Japanese macaques who were separated from their parents and reared by human caregivers who wore masks—i.e. they had no exposure to any faces for 6–24 months. The monkeys, before they were being allowed to see a face, showed a preference for human and monkey faces in photographs, and they were able to individuate human faces as well as monkey faces. After the deprivation period, they were exposed to either human or monkey faces for a month. After this exposition, the monkeys demonstrated preference for the category of faces to which they were exposed over the other category (and they were able to discriminate individual faces only within their familiar category of faces). Therefore, this study indicates that these monkeys have a predisposition to group faces into similarity classes of “familiar” and “unfamiliar” (Kelly et al. 2009; Sugita 2008). This thus speaks at least for the fact that generating similarity measures among faces has evolved a relatively long time ago.
Note that this differs from the suggestion of, e.g., Pascalis and Kelly (2009) that the FFT evolved to track potentially dangerous others. Given the findings of, e.g., Quinn et al. (2002), Rosa Salva et al. (2011), and Kaminski et al. (2009), we think that it is more plausible to see the evolutionary function of the FFT as the tracking of potential caregivers, though this may be more of a difference in emphasis.
There are various ways to measure similarity in faces: for example, using morphometrics, quantitative genetic studies, or faciometrics (see, e.g., Cox and Cox 2000, for an overview). For present purposes, though, these details do not matter.
Here, it is important to recall that (a) racial classifications differ across time and space (e.g. “Irish” was a racial classification in the nineteenth Century in the US, and “Han Chinese” is a racial classification in contemporary China; see e.g. Roediger (1999, 2002) and Dikötter (1997, 2015), and (b) biologically, there is little to underwrite any of these racial classifications (Appiah 1996; Haslanger 2012; though see also Spencer 2014).
This is further made implausible by the fact (noted earlier) that infants also consider the gendered features of faces to group them into similarity classes of familiar faces (Quinn et al. 2002).
This account is also supported by the work of Quinn et al. (2016), who have found that while 6-month-old White infants categorically represent the distinction between Black and Asian faces, 9-month-old White infants form a broader other-race category which includes both Black and Asian faces. This suggests that as infants get older, the race of their primary caregiver gets elevated as a marker of which sorts of faces should be included in the “familiar” group, while other “racial” differences get downgraded as bases for similarity groupings of familiar faces.
Here, it is also interesting to note that Heron-Delaney et al. (2017) found that Caucasian 3.5- and 6-month-old infants have a preference for upright Caucasian adult over Caucasian infant faces, but no preferences among upright Asian adult and infant faces. This preference is also well accounted for by the fact that these Caucasian infants were mostly familiar with adult Caucasian caregivers.
Similarly, Pauker et al. (2016a) found that contextual factors—both of the infants’ cultural background and the experimental setting—influence their propensity towards racial categorization. Again, this is very much in line with our account here.
Relatedly, it is also worthwhile noting that our account makes some as yet untested predictions that can be used to further distinguish it from rivals. For example, our account predicts that infants growing up in a racially heterogeneous environment will still categorize humans into different groups—corresponding to the familiar and the unfamiliar—but that this categorization will be highly specific to the facial features of the caregivers these infants have been in contact with. For example, some infants growing up in racially heterogeneous environments might categorize heavily by gender, whereas others might categorize heavily by the presence or absence of facial ornaments (earrings etc.). While this prediction of relatively great diversity in facial preferences among infants growing up in racially heterogeneous environments has not yet been tested, we think it is noteworthy here, as it shows that our account is empirically fruitful.
For example, they observed that 10-month-old infants accepted toys equally from own and other-race individuals. In fact, Kinzler and Spelke (2011) did not detect race-based social preferences until 5 years of age: even 2.5-year-old children gave toys equally to White and Black individuals. They did find that 5-to-6-year-old children expressed race-based social preferences in the same events. See below in section 5 for more on this.
Scherf and Scott (2012) also hint at a pluralist picture of racial cognition, but for very different reasons.
See e.g. Lam et al. (2011) on some of the changes in racial cognition around age 4.
So, for example, Pauker et al. (2016b) have shown that the propensity for out-group racial stereotyping and for the essentializing of social groups in 4-year olds was culturally variable (greater in Massachusetts and lower in Hawaii). Thus, more research is needed to understand how, when, and in what contexts the switch from the FFT-based to a more complex form of racial cognition occurs.
We also think this conclusion has some major policy implications (see, for example, Lee et al. 2017a, b, for how perceptual training—i.e. exposure to other race-faces in infancy—would reduce implicit racial bias against other races). However, bringing these out in detail calls for a paper of its own.
References
Alvergne, A., E. Huchard, D. Caillaud, M.J.E. Charpentier, J.M. Setchell, C. Ruppli, D. Féjan, L. Martinez, G. Cowlishaw, and M. Raymond. 2009. Human ability to recognize kin visually within primates. International Journal of Primatology 30 (1): 199–210. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-009-9339-0.
Anzures, G., A. Wheeler, P.C. Quinn, O. Pascalis, A.M. Slater, M. Heron-Delaney, J.W. Tanaka, and K. Lee. 2012. Brief daily exposures to Asian females reverses perceptual narrowing for Asian faces in Caucasian infants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 112 (4): 484–495. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2012.04.005.
Anzures, G., P.C. Quinn, O. Pascalis, A.M. Slater, and K. Lee. 2013a. Development of own-race biases. Visual Cognition 21 (9–10): 1165–1182. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2013.821428.
Anzures, G., P.C. Quinn, O. Pascalis, A.M. Slater, J.W. Tanaka, and K. Lee. 2013b. Developmental origins of the other-race effect. Current Directions in Psychological Science 22 (3): 173–178. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412474459.
Appiah, K.A. 1992. In My Father's House: Essays in the Philosophy of Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Appiah, K.A. 1996. Race, culture, identity: Misunderstood connections. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 17: 51–136.
Bar-Haim, Y., T. Ziv, D. Lamy, and R.M. Hodes. 2006. Nature and nurture in own-race face processing. Psychological Science 17 (2): 159–163. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01679.x.
Baron-Cohen, S. 1995. The eye direction detector (EDD) and the shared attention mechanism (SAM): Two cases for evolutionary psychology. In Joint attention: Its origins and role in development, 41–59. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Boyer, P., and B. Bergstrom. 2011. Threat-detection in child development: An evolutionary perspective. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 35 (4): 1034–1041. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.08.010.
Bruce, V., and A.W. Young. 2012. Face perception. East Sussex: Psychology Press.
Buss, D.M., M.G. Haselton, T.K. Shackelford, A.L. Bleske, and J.C. Wakefield. 1998. Adaptations, exaptations, and spandrels. The American Psychologist 53 (5): 533–548.
Carruthers, P. 2006. The architecture of the mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cassia, V.M., F. Simion, and C. Umiltaà. 2001. Face preference at birth: The role of an orienting mechanism. Developmental Science 4 (1): 101–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7687.00154.
Chien, S.H.-L., J.-F. Wang, and T.-R. Huang. 2016. Developing the own-race advantage in 4-, 6-, and 9-month-old Taiwanese infants: A perceptual learning perspective. Frontiers in Psychology 7 (1606). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01606.
Churchland, P.S. 2011. Braintrust: What neuroscience tells us about morality. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cox, T.F. and Cox, M.A. A. 2000. Multidimensional scaling. Boca Raton, Florida: Chapman and Hall/CRC.
Damasio, A.R., H. Damasio, and G.W. Van Hoesen. 1982. Prosopagnosia: Anatomic basis and behavioral mechanisms. Neurology 32 (4): 331–341.
de Haan, M., O. Pascalis, and M.H. Johnson. 2002. Specialization of neural mechanisms underlying face recognition in human infants. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 14 (2): 199–209. https://doi.org/10.1162/089892902317236849.
Dikötter, F. 1997. The construction of racial identities in China and Japan. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Dikötter, F. 2015. The discourse of race in modern China. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fantz, R.L. 1963. Pattern vision in newborn infants. Science 140 (3564): 296–297. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.140.3564.296.
Farah, M.J., K.D. Wilson, H. Maxwell Drain, and J.R. Tanaka. 1995. The inverted face inversion effect in prosopagnosia: Evidence for mandatory, face-specific perceptual mechanisms. Vision Research 35 (14): 2089–2093. https://doi.org/10.1016/0042-6989(94)00273-O.
Field, T.M., D. Cohen, R. Garcia, and R. Greenberg. 1984. Mother-stranger face discrimination by the newborn. Infant Behavior & Development 7 (1): 19–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(84)80019-3.
Fodor, J. 1983. The modularity of mind. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Gaither, S.E., K. Pauker, and S.P. Johnson. 2012. Biracial and Monoracial infant own-race face perception: An eye tracking study. Developmental Science 15 (6): 775–782. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01170.x.
Gil-White, F.J. 2001. Are ethnic groups biological “species” to the human brain? Current Anthropology 42 (4): 515–554.
Goren, C.C., M. Sarty, and P.Y. Wu. 1975. Visual following and pattern discrimination of face-like stimuli by newborn infants. Pediatrics 56 (4): 544–549.
Green, D.M., and J.A. Swets. 1966. Signal detection theory and psychophysics. Oxford: John Wiley.
Haslanger, S. 2012. Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hayden, A., R.S. Bhatt, J.E. Joseph, and J.W. Tanaka. 2007. The other-race effect in infancy: Evidence using a morphing technique. Infancy 12 (1): 95–104. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7078.2007.tb00235.x.
Heron-Delaney, M., F. Damon, P.C. Quinn, D. Méary, N.G. Xiao, K. Lee, and O. Pascalis. 2017. An adult face bias in infants that is modulated by face race. International Journal of Behavioral Development 41 (5): 581–587. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025416651735.
Hirschfeld, L.A. 1996. Race in making: Cognition, culture, and the child’s construction of human kinds. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hoehl, S., and S. Peykarjou. 2012. The early development of face processing — What makes faces special? Neuroscience Bulletin 28 (6): 765–788.
Houston-Price, C., and S. Nakai. 2004. Distinguishing novelty and familiarity effects in infant preference procedures. Infant and Child Development 13 (4): 341–348. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.364.
Hrdy, S.B. 1979. Infanticide among animals: A review, classification, and examination of the implications for the reproductive strategies of females. Ethology and Sociobiology 1 (1): 13–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(79)90004-9.
Johnson, M.H., and J. Morton. 1991. Biology and cognitive development. The case of face recognition. Oxford: Wiley.
Johnson, M.H., S. Dziurawiec, H. Ellis, and J. Morton. 1991. Newborns' preferential tracking of face-like stimuli and its subsequent decline. Cognition 40 (1–2): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(91)90045-6.
Kaminski, G., S. Dridi, C. Graff, and E. Gentaz. 2009. Human ability to detect kinship in strangers' faces: Effects of the degree of relatedness. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 276 (1670): 3193–3200. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2009.0677.
Kaminski, G., E. Gentaz, and K. Mazens. 2012. Development of children's ability to detect kinship through facial resemblance. Animal Cognition 15 (3): 421–427. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-011-0461-y.
Kelly, D.J., P.C. Quinn, A.M. Slater, K. Lee, A. Gibson, M. Smith, L. Ge, and O. Pascalis. 2005. Three-month-olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces. Developmental Science 8 (6): F31–F36. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.0434a.x.
Kelly, D.J., S. Liu, L. Ge, P.C. Quinn, A.M. Slater, K. Lee, Q. Liu, and O. Pascalis. 2007a. Cross-race preferences for same-race faces extend beyond the African versus Caucasian contrast in 3-month-old infants. Infancy 11 (1): 87–95. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327078in1101_4.
Kelly, D.J., P.C. Quinn, A.M. Slater, K. Lee, L. Ge, and O. Pascalis. 2007b. The other-race effect develops during infancy:Evidence of perceptual narrowing. Psychological Science 18 (12): 1084–1089. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.02029.x.
Kelly, D.J., S. Liu, K. Lee, P.C. Quinn, O. Pascalis, A.M. Slater, and L. Ge. 2009. Development of the other-race effect during infancy: Evidence toward universality? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 104 (1): 105–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2009.01.006.
Kelly, D., E. Machery, and R. Mallon. 2010. Race and racial cognition. In Moral psychology handbook, ed. J. D. e. al., 433–472. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kendrick, K.M., A.P. da Costa, A.E. Leigh, M.R. Hinton, and J.W. Peirce. 2001. Sheep don't forget a face. Nature 414 (6860): 165–166. https://doi.org/10.1038/35102669.
Kinzler, K.D., and E.S. Spelke. 2011. Do infants show social preferences for people differing in race? Cognition 119 (1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.10.019.
Kinzler, K.D., K. Shutts, J. Dejesus, and E.S. Spelke. 2009. Accent trumps race in guiding children's social preferences. Social Cognition 27 (4): 623–634. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2009.27.4.623.
Kurzban, R., J. Tooby, and L. Cosmides. 2001. Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 98 (26): 15387–15392. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.251541498.
Kuwahata, H., I. Adachi, K. Fujita, M. Tomonaga, and T. Matsuzawa. 2004. Development of schematic face preference in macaque monkeys. Behavioural Processes 66 (1): 17–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2003.11.002.
Lam, V., S. Guerrero, N. Damree, and I. Enesco. 2011. Young children's racial awareness and affect and their perceptions about mothers' racial affect in a multiracial context. The British Journal of Developmental Psychology 29 (Pt 4): 842–864. https://doi.org/10.1348/2044-835x.002013.
Lee, K., P.C. Quinn, and G.D. Heyman. 2017a. Rethinking the emergence and development of implicit racial Bias: A perceptual-social linkage hypothesis. In New perspectives on human development, ed. E. Turiel, N. Budwig, and P.D. Zelazo, 27–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, K., P.C. Quinn, and O. Pascalis. 2017b. Face race processing and racial Bias in early development: A perceptual-social linkage. Current Directions in Psychological Science 26 (3): 256–262. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417690276.
Leopold, D.A., and G. Rhodes. 2010. A comparative view of face perception. Journal of Comparative Psychology (Washington, D.C. : 1983) 124 (3): 233–251. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019460.
Liu, S., W.S. Xiao, N.G. Xiao, P.C. Quinn, Y. Zhang, H. Chen, L. Ge, O. Pascalis, and K. Lee. 2015. Development of visual preference for own- versus other-race faces in infancy. Developmental Psychology 51 (4): 500–511. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038835.
Machery, E., and L. Faucher. 2005. Social construction and the concept of race. Philosophy of Science 72 (5): 1208–1219.
Marr, D. 1982. Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. San Francisco: WH Freeman and Company.
Maurer, D., and R.E. Young. 1983. Newborn's following of natural and distorted arrangements of facial features. Infant Behavior & Development 6 (1): 127–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(83)80018-6.
Mondloch, C.J., T.L. Lewis, D.R. Budreau, D. Maurer, J.L. Dannemiller, B.R. Stephens, and K.A. Kleiner-Gathercoal. 1999. Face perception during early infancy. Psychological Science 10 (5): 419–422.
Myowa-Yamakoshi, M., and M. Tomonaga. 2001. Development of face recognition in an infant gibbon(Hylobates agilis). Infant Behavior & Development 24: 215–227.
Pascalis, O., and D.J. Kelly. 2009. The origins of face processing in humans: Phylogeny and ontogeny. Perspectives on Psychological Science 4 (2): 200–209. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01119.x.
Pascalis, O., M. de Haan, and C.A. Nelson. 2002. Is face processing species-specific during the first year of life? Science 296 (5571): 1321–1323. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1070223.
Pauker, K., A. Williams, and J.R. Steele. 2016a. Children's racial categorization in context. Child Development Perspectives 10 (1): 33–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12155.
Pauker, K., Y. Xu, A. Williams, and A.M. Biddle. 2016b. Race essentialism and social contextual differences in Children's racial stereotyping. Child Development 87 (5): 1409–1422. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12592.
Quinn, P.C., J. Yahr, A. Kuhn, A.M. Slater, and O. Pascalis. 2002. Representation of the gender of human faces by infants: A preference for female. Perception 31 (9): 1109–1121. https://doi.org/10.1068/p3331.
Quinn, P.C., L. Uttley, K. Lee, A. Gibson, M. Smith, A.M. Slater, and O. Pascalis. 2008. Infant preference for female faces occurs for same- but not other-race faces. Journal of Neuropsychology 2 (1): 15–26. https://doi.org/10.1348/174866407X231029.
Quinn, P.C., K. Lee, O. Pascalis, and J.W. Tanaka. 2016. Narrowing in categorical responding to other-race face classes by infants. Developmental Science 19 (3): 362–371. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12301.
Rennels, J.L., and R.E. Davis. 2008. Facial experience during the first year. Infant Behavior & Development 31 (4): 665–678. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2008.04.009.
Rhodes, M., and S.A. Gelman. 2009. Five-year-olds’ beliefs about the discreteness of category boundaries for animals and artifacts. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16 (5): 920–924. https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.5.920.
Rhodes, M., C. Hetherington, K. Brink, and H.M. Wellman. 2015. Infants' use of social partnerships to predict behavior. Developmental Science 18 (6): 909–916. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12267.
Roediger, D.R. 1999. The wages of whiteness: Race and the making of the American working class. London: Verso.
Roediger, D.R. 2002. Colored white: Transcending the racial past. Vol. 10. Berkeley: Univ of California Press.
Rosa Salva, O., T. Farroni, L. Regolin, G. Vallortigara, and M.H. Johnson. 2011. The evolution of social orienting: Evidence from chicks (Gallus gallus) and human newborns. PLoS ONE 6 (4): e18802. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0018802.
Rossion, B., Gauthier, I., Tarr, M.J., Despland, P.A., Bruyer, R., Linotte, S., and M. Crommelinck. 2000. The N170 occipito-temporal component is enhanced and delayed to inverted faces but not to inverted objects: An electrophyiological account of face-specific processes in the human brain (Vol. 11).
Sangrigoli, S., and S. De Schonen. 2004. Recognition of own-race and other-race faces by three-month-old infants. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45 (7): 1219–1227. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00319.x.
Sangrigoli, S., C. Pallier, A.-M. Argenti, V.A.G. Ventureyra, and S.d. Schonen. 2005. Reversibility of the other-race effect in face recognition during childhood. Psychological Science 16 (6): 440–444. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01554.x.
Scarr, S., and P. Salapatek. 1970. Patterns of fear development during infancy (Vol. 16).
Scherf, K.S., and L.S. Scott. 2012. Connecting developmental trajectories: Biases in face processing from infancy to adulthood. Developmental Psychobiology 54 (6): 643–663. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21013.
Shutts, K., K.D. Kinzler, R.C. Katz, C. Tredoux, and E.S. Spelke. 2011. Race preferences in children: Insights from South Africa. Developmental Science 14 (6): 1283–1291. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2011.01072.x.
Simion, F., and E. Di Giorgio. 2015. Face perception and processing in early infancy: Inborn predispositions and developmental changes. Frontiers in Psychology 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00969.
Sober, E. 2000. Philosophy of biology. New York: Westview Press.
Spencer, Q. 2014. A radical solution to the race problem. Philosophy of Science 81 (5): 1025–1038.
Sugden, N.A., M.I. Mohamed-Ali, and M.C. Moulson. 2014. I spy with my little eye: Typical, daily exposure to faces documented from a first-person infant perspective. Developmental Psychobiology 56 (2): 249–261. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21183.
Sugita, Y. 2008. Face perception in monkeys reared with no exposure to faces. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105 (1): 394–398. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0706079105.
Telzer, E.H., K.L. Humphreys, M. Shapiro, and N. Tottenham. 2013. Amygdala sensitivity to race is not present in childhood but emerges over adolescence. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 25 (2): 234–244. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00311.
Tooby, J., and L. Cosmides. 1992. The psychological foundations of culture. In The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, ed. J.H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby, 19–136. New York: Oxford University Press.
Valentine, T. (1991). A unified account of the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race in face recognition. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A 43(2): 161–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/14640749108400966
Valentine, T., & Endo, M. (1992). Towards an exemplar model of face processing: The effects of race and distinctiveness. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A: Human Experimental Psychology 44A(4): 671–703. https://doi.org/10.1080/14640749208401305
Valentine, T., Lewis, M. B., & Hills, P. J. (2016). Face-Space: A Unifying Concept in Face Recognition Research. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 69(10): 1996–2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2014.990392
Valenza, E., F. Simion, V.M. Cassia, and C. Umilta. 1996. Face preference at birth. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance 22 (4): 892–903.
Vogel, M., A. Monesson, and L.S. Scott. 2012. Building biases in infancy: The influence of race on face and voice emotion matching. Developmental Science 15 (3): 359–372. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01138.x.
Zebrowitz, L.A., B. White, and K. Wieneke. 2008. Mere exposure and racial prejudice: Exposure to other-race faces increases liking for strangers of that race. Social Cognition 26 (3): 259–275. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2008.26.3.259.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the anonymous referees for very helpful comments on previous versions of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Osmanoglu, K., W. Schulz, A. It Just Looks the Same: An Evolutionary Psychological Account of Differences in Racial Cognition Among Infants and Older Humans. Rev.Phil.Psych. 10, 631–647 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-018-0417-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-018-0417-0