Perceptual mechanisms have been proposed for the categorization of racial faces. Social cognitive mechanisms involved in the categorization of racial faces, however, remain unclear. The present study investigated whether and how attitudes influence racial face categorization by measuring reaction times to judge orientations of own-race or other-race faces. Study 1 showed that, in a task of judging orientations of Caucasian and Asian faces, European Americans responded faster to own-race (Caucasian) faces than to other-race (Asian) faces. Study 2 showed that Han Chinese responded faster to own-race (Han Chinese) faces than to other-race (Uigur Chinese) faces. In addition, we found that, in both experiments, own-race advantage in reaction times was eliminated by inducing negative attitudes toward own-race faces using a negative association priming procedure. Moreover, the mediation analysis in Study 2 showed that the priming effect was mediated by attitude bias toward own-race faces. Our findings provide evidence for categorization of racial faces in a perceptual, race-irrelevant task, which, however, is strongly modulated by attitudes toward target faces.
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