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Motivational Incentives Improve Unfamiliar Face Matching Accuracy
Author(s) -
Moore Rachel M.,
Johnston Robert A.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.2964
Subject(s) - incentive , psychology , matching (statistics) , face (sociological concept) , cognitive psychology , cognition , equivalence (formal languages) , task (project management) , face perception , social psychology , perception , microeconomics , statistics , social science , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , management , neuroscience , sociology , economics
Summary Unfamiliar face matching is the process of simultaneously verifying the equivalence of two faces. Accuracy within this task is crucial given its importance and prevalence in security domains. However, research has consistently demonstrated that unfamiliar face matching is error prone, suggesting the need for improvement techniques. Motivational incentives have been shown to reliably enhance performance on a wide array of cognitive tasks. Therefore, the current study examined the effect of motivational incentives on unfamiliar face matching. Experiment 1 showed increased accuracy in mismatch trials with the addition of a motivational incentive. The improvement was associated with an increase in reaction time and bias towards making a mismatch response. This bias, however, did not produce a decrease in accuracy on match trials. Experiment 2 replicated this result with a more ecologically valid methodology. The results suggest motivational incentives to be effective at improving performance on mismatch trials, arguably the most important aspect of real‐world unfamiliar face matching. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.