Does confidence indicate face-identity matching accuracy for own-race and other-race faces?

People identify faces of their own race more accurately than faces of other races, a phenomenon known as the other-race effect (ORE). Confidence reliably indicates face-identity matching accuracy for same-race faces, but it is not known whether this relationship holds for other-race faces. We examined the confidence-accuracy relationship for same- and other-race faces in Caucasian and African American participants. To eliminate response bias, we measured confidence using a confidence forced-choice task (Mamassian, 2016), rather than with confidence ratings. Participants completed two consecutive face identity-matching trials and selected the trial on which they felt more confident (“confidence-chosen trial”). The results showed an ORE for face-identity matching accuracy, but not for the confidence-accuracy relationship. We also examined the extent to which comparative-trial difficulty (difference between the difficulty of the paired trials) predicted relative confidence decisions. For African American participants, difficulty predicted confidence for same- and other-race decisions. For Caucasian participants, difficulty predicted confidence for same-, but not other-race, face-identity matching decisions. Overall, confidence predicted accuracy in both same- and other-race face-identity matching, with difficulty consistently guiding confidence for same-race faces. These findings enhance our understanding of how confidence decisions are formed and guide cross-race identification decisions.