We examine relations between racial essentialism—the belief that racial categories are natural and homogeneous due to shared underlying properties—and the Own-Race Bias (ORB)—the tendency to recognize racial ingroup faces better than racial outgroup faces. We assessed essentialist beliefs and Facial Recognition Memory (FRM) for Black, White, and Asian targets in White American (WA) and Asian/Asian American (A/AA) participants. Because essentialism leads to increased perception of group homogeneity, we predicted a positive association between ORB and racial outgroup essentialism. Group differences emerged on both measures: WA participants essentialized racial outgroups more than their ingroup and recognized White faces more accurately than Black or Asian faces, whereas A/AA participants essentialized their ingroup more than racial outgroups and did not demonstrate the ORB. The overall association between racial essentialism and ORB was not observed within groups; suggesting that cultural differences might underlie group differences in relations between FRM and essentialism.

我们研究了种族本质主义（由于共同的基础属性，种族类别是自然的和同质的）与个人种族偏见（ORB）之间的关系，这种倾向比种族外群面孔更能识别种族内在面孔。我们评估了白人美国人（WA）和亚裔/亚裔美国人（A / AA）参与者针对黑人，白人和亚洲人的目标的基本信念和面部识别记忆（FRM）。因为本质主义导致人们对群体同质性的认识增加，所以我们预测ORB与种族外群体本质主义之间存在正相关关系。在这两种方法上都出现了群体差异：西澳州参与者对种族外来群体的重视程度高于其对内群体，并且比白人或黑人面孔更能准确地识别出白人面孔，而A / AA参与者比种族群体更重要的是他们的内在群体，并且没有证明ORB。群体内部没有观察到种族本质主义与ORB之间的整体联系；这表明文化差异可能是FRM与本质主义之间的群体差异的基础。