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Face recognition as a predictor of social cognitive ability: Effects of emotion and race on face processing
Author(s) -
Chen Jiaqing
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
asian journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.5
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-839X
pISSN - 1367-2223
DOI - 10.1111/ajsp.12041
Subject(s) - psychology , facial recognition system , face (sociological concept) , task (project management) , cognition , facial expression , emotional intelligence , social cognition , race (biology) , cognitive psychology , emotion recognition , developmental psychology , social psychology , communication , pattern recognition (psychology) , social science , botany , management , neuroscience , sociology , economics , biology
The human face conveys important social signals when people interact in social contexts. The current study investigated the relationship between face recognition and emotional intelligence, and how societal factors of emotion and race influence people's face recognition. Participants’ recognition accuracy, reaction time, sensitivity, and response bias were measured to examine their face‐processing ability. Fifty C aucasian undergraduates (38 females, 12 males; average age = 21.76 years) participated in a face recognition task in which they discriminated previously presented target faces from novel distractor faces. A positive correlation between participants’ emotional intelligence scores and their performance on the face recognition task was observed, suggesting that face recognition ability was associated with emotional or social intelligence. Additionally, C aucasian participants recognized happy faces better than angry or neutral faces. It was also observed that people recognized A sian faces better than C aucasian ones, which appears to be contradictory to the classic other‐race effect. The present study suggests that some societal factors could influence face processing, and face recognition ability could in turn predict social intelligence.