“They All Look the Same?” Participant Ethnicity Moderates the Cross-Race Effect on Judgments of Learning

Abstract

The Cross-Race Effect (CRE) refers to the repeated finding that individuals are better at recognizing faces belonging to members of their own racial or ethnic ingroup. While this effect has been widely studied on memory, fewer studies have explored whether judgments of learning (JOLs) are also sensitive to this pattern. In two experiments, Black and White participants made JOLs while studying high typicality same and other-race faces (Experiment 1) or a mix of high and low typicality faces (Experiment 2). We replicated the CRE on memory, as participants were better at recognizing and showed greater discriminability for same-race faces. Importantly, the CRE pattern extended to JOLs. However, this pattern was linked to participant ethnicity, as only Black participants’ JOLs were sensitive to the CRE. For White participants, mean JOLs did not differ between same and other-race targets, regardless of typicality. Responses on racial attitude measures showed that White participants displayed stronger internal motivations to appear non-prejudiced; however, correlational and mediation analyses revealed that this JOL pattern was not driven by differences in racial attitudes or motivations. Thus, while JOLs can be sensitive to the CRE, this effect varies by participant ethnicity, underscoring the influence of social experience on metacognitive judgments.

Keywords

memory metamemory judgments of learning face perception cross-race effect

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