Face masks became prevalent across the globe as an efficient tool to stop the spread of COVID-19. A host of studies already demonstrated that masks lead to changes in facial identification and emotional expression processing. These changes were documented across ages and were consistent even with the increased exposure to masked faces. Notably,…

Faces judged as stereotypically Black are perceived negatively relative to less stereotypical faces. In this experiment, artificial faces were constructed to examine the effects of nose width, lip fullness, and skin reflectance, as well as to study the relations among perceived dominance, threat, and Black stereotypicality. Using a multilevel…

Virtual faces have been found to be rated less human-like and remembered worse than photographic images of humans. What it is in virtual faces that yields reduced memory has so far remained unclear. The current study investigated face memory in the context of virtual agent faces and human faces, real and manipulated, considering two factors of…

Previous research has mostly approached face recognition and target identification by focusing on face perception mechanisms, but memory mechanisms also appear to play a role. Here, we examined how the presence of a mask interferes with the memory mechanisms involved in face recognition, focusing on the dynamic interplay between encoding and…

Facial features are important sources of information about perceived trustworthiness. Masks and protective clothing diminish the visibility of facial cues by either partially concealing the mouth and nose or covering the entire face. During the pandemic, the use of personal protective equipment affected and redefined who trusts whom in society.…

Face perception is considered a remarkable visual ability in humans that is subject to a prolonged developmental trajectory. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, mask-wearing has become mandatory for adults and children alike. Recent research shows that mask-wearing hinders face recognition abilities in adults, but it is unknown if the same holds…

Matching the identity of unfamiliar faces is important in applied identity verification tasks, for example when verifying photo ID at border crossings, in secure access areas, or when issuing identity credentials. In these settings, other biographical details--such as name or date of birth on an identity document--are also often compared to…

One reason for the persistence of racial discrimination may be anticipated dissimilarity with racial outgroup members that prevent meaningful interactions. In the present research, we investigated whether perceived similarity would impact the processing of same-race and other-race faces. Specifically, in two experiments, we varied the extent to…

Although faces of in-group members are generally thought to be processed holistically, there are mixed findings on whether holistic processing remains robust for faces of out-group members and what factors contribute to holistic processing of out-group faces. This study examined how implicit social bias, experience with out-group members, and…

This study measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to test competing hypotheses regarding the effects of anger and race on early visual processing (N1, P2, and N2) and error recognition (ERN and Pe) during a sequentially primed weapon identification task. The first hypothesis was that anger would impair weapon identification in a biased…