RUI: Processing ambiguity: From initial perception to race classification of multiracial faces in diverse observers

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

America’s multiracial population represents one of its fastest growing segments. In the 50-years following the legalization of interracial marriage in the US, multiracial individuals have grown to represent 6.9% of the American population, a figure poised to triple by 2060. By their very nature, multiracial people challenge conventional either-or thinking about race, offering important avenues for improving race relations.

This research investigates basic cognitive and social psychological influences on multiracial face perception with these broader impacts in mind. Understanding how perceivers think about and racially categorize multiracial people also has consequences for both the physical and mental well-being of multiracial individuals themselves. As a result, it has become increasingly important to understand how multiracial people think about their racial identity and how they are perceived by others.

Research has consistently found that people are generally unable to categorize multiracial people as multiracial. Understanding why and under what circumstances people fail to recognize others as multiracial forms the basis for the current research.

This project tests the hypothesis that the inability to identify multiracial people as multiracial is not universal but depends on the extent to which one’s past experiences foster a mental representation of multiracial others. It is predicted that people from areas with a relatively large multiracial population will be more attuned to multiracial faces than those with little prior exposure and will therefore be more likely to identify such faces as multiracial.

This research also explores the elements of cognitive processing as they rapidly unfold during the perception of monoracial and multiracial faces. Using reaction time modeling and recordings of electrical brain activity with electroencephalography (EEG), the research aims to identify distinct stages of processing that occur between initially seeing a face and its eventual categorization.

Unpacking these processing stages will allow an examination of how they differ when viewing a multiracial versus monoracial face, and how they may be differentially tuned by level of prior contact with multiracial people. Critically, the research fosters active student involvement by providing hands-on, technical training in scientific research methods and statistical procedures, professional development, and intensive mentorship of underrepresented students of color.

These funds also allow for increased access to neuroscientific tools and training by traditionally underserved students, thereby diversifying the scientific pipeline for years to come.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.