Examining Own-Race Bias: A Cooperation and Memory Study Using Diverse Emojis

Other-race-effect or own-race bias is a well-documented phenomenon in memory. Findings suggest that humans are better at recognizing and remembering faces of their own race than other races. Previous research suggests that these results are due to a lack of interracial contact or exposure to other racial groups. Evidence from previous studies has demonstrated that individuals process own-race faces differently than other-race faces, paying more attention to more salient features that become better encoded. While there is empirical support for both hypotheses, it has yet to be studied if the other-race effect for memory extends to representational human faces, for instance, emojis. Emojis are digital pictures used for electronic communication of emotions, expressions, and meaning. The current study examined if the other-race effect for recognition memory extended to people emojis. Black (n = 47) and White (n = 47) participants viewed both light/medium-light skin tone and dark/medium-dark skin tone emojis. Participants completed a cooperation task and a memory computer task. Results indicated that there was no difference in memory or cooperation for same-race or other-race faces. However, Black participants that held their racial identity in more positive regard were marginally more likely to remember dark and medium-dark emoji faces. Additionally, Black participants that were more satisfied with their skin color were significantly more likely to remember dark and medium-dark emoji faces. Overall, participants cooperated significantly more with emoji faces than human faces. White participants higher in empathy were marginally more likely to cooperate with Black and dark/mediumdark partners than those lower in empathy. These results suggest that individual differences can moderate own-race bias even for emoji faces. EXAMINING OWN-RACE BIAS 3 Examining Own-Race Bias: A Cooperation and Memory Study Using Diverse Emojis Due to frequent exposure, humans have become experts in detecting faces. Nevertheless, the degree of expertise can vary due to differences among faces. It is well-documented that people show greater attention and memory for individuals who share aspects of their self-identity (see Meissner & Brigham, 2001). This phenomenon is known as the other-race-effect (or own-race bias or cross-racial identification effect). The other-race effect refers to the finding that facial recognition memory tends to be better for faces that correspond to a participant’s race than for faces of different races (Lindsay et al., 1991). Findings from a functional magnetic resonance imaging study support the other-race effect (Golby et al., 2001). In this study, when adults viewed other-race faces, there was less activity in the fusiform face area compared to when viewing own-race faces (Golby et al., 2001). Furthermore, activation in the left fusiform cortex and right parahippocampal and hippocampal areas correlated with memory differences between same-race and other-race faces (Golby et al., 2001). Meissner and Brighman (2001) define the other-race effect as a phenomenon in memory for human faces. Even though the other-race effect has been observed for inverted faces, scrambled faces, and blurred faces, in general, prior research has limited the use of stimuli to explore the other-race effect among images of real people (Hayward et al., 2008; Rhodes et al., 1989). Although claiming that ownrace memory bias is specific to “human” faces, to my knowledge, no previous research has directly compared the own-race memory bias for both human and human-like faces. In the late 1990s, a Japanese company transformed emoticons into emojis, a basic string of characters that portray facial expressions (Kaye et al., 2017). Emojis are colorful digital pictures used on mobile phones and other forms of electronic communication. Due to online and digital communication growth, emojis are becoming an increasingly common form of electronic communication. A unique aspect of emojis is that they are nonverbal cues that convey semantic functions (meaning) and emotional EXAMINING OWN-RACE BIAS 4 functions (Bai et al., 2019). Moreover, a recent study that included over 85,000 Facebook users found that 90% of these users included an emoji in their public feed (Oleszkiewicz et al., 2017). One category of emojis is people emojis. The first emoji set launched in 2011 under iOS 5 with all light-skinned people emojis. In 2014 the default was changed to yellow to depict a non-human skin color. In 2015 Unicode introduced racially diverse human emojis (version 8.0, Apple iOS 8.3, and OS X 10.10.3; Sweeney, & Whaley, 2019). This update allowed for skin tone modification to the “people” category of emojis. The skin tone modifiers increase racial representation in the people emoji category (Sweeney & Whaley, 2019). The emoji skin tone modifiers are based upon the Fitzpatrick skin type scale used throughout dermatology to classify human skin color and susceptibility to skin cancer (Fizpatrick, 1988). The emoji skin tone modifiers make the emojis more personal and reflective of self-identity. A study that examined over 44 million public tweets found that 330,300 contained a diversity associated emoji, for example, emojis that varied by skin tones, gender symbols, religious symbols, and the LGBT pride flag, with people typically selecting emojis that represent their skin tone (Swartz et al., 2020). Social identity and social media are becoming increasingly linked, allowing for digital intergroup interactions to occur.