title: Social Groups Prioritize Selective Attention to Faces: How Social Identity Shapes Distractor Interference.
abstract: Human faces automatically attract visual attention and this process appears to be guided by social group memberships. In two experiments, we examined how social groups guide selective attention toward in-group and out-group faces. Black and White participants detected a target letter among letter strings superimposed on faces (Experiment 1). White participants were less accurate on trials with racial out-group (Black) compared to in-group (White) distractor faces. Likewise, Black participants were less accurate on trials with racial out-group (White) compared to in-group (Black) distractor faces. However, this pattern of out-group bias was only evident under high perceptual load-when the task was visually difficult. To examine the malleability of this pattern of racial bias, a separate sample of participants were assigned to mixed-race minimal groups (Experiment 2). Participants assigned to groups were less accurate on trials with their minimal in-group members compared to minimal out-group distractor faces, regardless of race. Again, this pattern of out-group bias was only evident under high perceptual load. Taken together, these results suggest that social identity guides selective attention toward motivationally relevant social groups-shifting from out-group bias in the domain of race to in-group bias in the domain of minimal groups-when perceptual resources are scarce.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Gewnhi
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jay J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Van Bavel
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, United State of America.
authors.forename: LaBarron K
authors.initials: LK
authors.lastname: Hill
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: DeWayne P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Julian F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Thayer