Own-Race Bias Is Not Fixed: Peers Shape Face Processing in Adolescents

This dataset is for the project investigating peer bias and own-race bias in adolescents. The Own Race Bias (ORB) is characterized as a stable component of face recognition. We hypothesized that the ORB systematically varies within individuals as a function of the developmental relevance of the faces to be remembered. We tested this hypothesis in adolescence because of the salience of peer faces to their face recognition behaviors. We tested White, Black, East Asian and biracial adolescents in the US (N=221). Adolescents recognized both peer- and parent-aged faces from each of three racial categories (White, Black, East Asian). We computed the ORB (own race – other races) for peer- and parent-aged faces. Adolescents did not evince a consistent ORB - they exhibited an ORB only while recognizing parent-aged faces (i.e., not peer-aged faces). These results challenge hypotheses about the mechanisms of the ORB and highlight the importance of considering the developmental phase of participants and of stimuli in studies of face recognition.