Cross-breed Effect: What It Is And How It Affects Perception
All Chinese are the same, and the blacks, and the Latinos, and the Hindus, and the whites! How many times have we heard this phrase that is so stereotypical but, ironically, so said no matter what race you are?
This phenomenon has a name: it is the crossbreed effect It is the bias that people show when we see people of another race. It gives us the feeling that they are all the same, even though we are aware that they must be different in some way.
This effect so shared between cultures has been investigated by social psychology and an attempt has been made to understand why and how it occurs, in addition to understanding its consequences. Let’s take a closer look at what it consists of.
The cross-race effect, also called cross-race bias, is the tendency to more easily recognize faces that are familiar compared to those that are not so familiar and makes special reference when this familiarity is due to the fact that one is observing a face of a person of one’s own race.
The first researcher to address this phenomenon was Feingold in 1914, who observed how the average American citizen had difficulty seeing differences between black and Asian people. Basically, He argued that there is a tendency to see people of another race as all equal while people of the same race become, subjectively speaking, more distinguishable from one another.
An attempt has been made to explain what the usefulness of this phenomenon could be. Social psychology has defended the idea that this effect is an ingroup advantage, closely related to discerning differences in the ingroup, that is, seeing the members of one’s own group as more different in terms of personality, behavior and physical appearance. comparison with people belonging to an out-group (out-group homogeneity effect).
Research on this effect has suggested that behind recognizing faces based on their race there were two types of processing: based on features and based on the entire face (holistic)
It has been observed that holistic processing is used more with faces of the same race, but there is an experience effect, since the person is so used to seeing that type of face that they quickly recognize differences or distinctive features. On the other hand, feature-based processing occurs with unfamiliar faces, making greater cognitive effort trying to find different features, which can be seen as simple nuances or very subtle differences.
Theoretical approaches
There are several investigations that have tried to understand why people who belong to one race see members of other races as practically the same people or with very few differences in terms of their physical features.
Ingroup advantage
It has been proposed that the cross-race effect could have a strong relationship with ingroup advantage. This type of advantage occurs when members of the same group, whether ethnic, racial, cultural or any other type, tend to evaluate members belonging to that group more favorably and, consequently, judging those who belong to other groups less favorably (outgroup disadvantage).
It has been seen, from the field of social psychology, that the slightest aspect that represents a division between people induces this type of advantage and disadvantage.
This differentiating aspect can be something as banal as liking a certain flavor of ice cream, having sat in the front rows of the class at school, or being tall. The cross-race effect appears if the differentiating aspect is race, an aspect that, in itself, is quite striking.
Influence on emotion recognition
It has been seen that people are more efficient at recognizing the emotions of people of our own race before those of faces of other races. This It occurs in all races in a more or less equal way That is, Asian people tend to see white people as all the same and with little gestural expressiveness in the same way that white people tend to consider Asians as not very expressive.
Social psychology has defended the fact that people We tend to think more categorically when we see people who belong to other groups that is, we are victims of what is known as the outgroup homogeneity effect.
This effect is what contributes to the formation of stereotypes with respect to aspects such as culture, ethnicity and, of course, race. It is for this reason that, when we see people of other races, even though there may be physical differences between them, such as skin tone, the size of the nose, the color of their eyes or the type of hair, it is difficult for us to recognize these subtle differentiating features.
Contact hypothesis
It has been suggested that the cross-race effect is reducible, that is, making a person of a certain race, say white, able to distinguish between people of another, say Asians or blacks.
This could be achieved by having the person maintain frequent contact with people of the race to be differentiated; Through learning, you would be able to quickly identify physical traits that represent interindividual differences between members of that specific race
That is, by being in continuous contact with people, in this case, Asians, it is possible to see that, although there are traits shared by the vast majority, such as having slanted eyes or a light skin tone, there are other traits. differentiable, such as the size of the nose, hair color, tone of voice, height…
It is through this strategy that the individual will be able to observe greater heterogeneity in people of that race.
Consequences
The cross-breed effect can have especially serious consequences in the field of criminology, especially in situations where the victim has to recognize their aggressor. For example, in situations where a suspect has to be recognized, it is not uncommon to put them together side by side while the victim or a witness tries to indicate who was responsible for the crime.
This is especially delicate when the person who committed the crime was of a different race than the victim. The victim, biased by the effect, can see all the people placed on the other side of the one-way screen as the same or very similar, and it may be the case that she blames someone who is innocent.
The South Korean team and the World Cup in Russia
In 2018, the World Cup was held in Russia, and the coach of the South Korean national team, Taeguk Shin Tae-Yong, fed up with the Swedish team’s spies, who tried to see the strengths and weaknesses of each player, plotted a simple but effective plan: exchanging the players’ shirts during training, taking advantage of the fact that the Swedish spies, white and not inclined to see Asian faces, would not notice the deception. Basically the South Korean coach made a practical application of the cross-breed effect.
The curious thing about this is two things. The first is that Until the coach confessed his curious strategy, no one had realized the deception Whether it was the Swedes or any other Western team, Taeguk Shin Tae-Yong knew that his plan would surely go unnoticed by any white person. However, and this is where we enter the second curious fact, the strategy did not help them win against the Scandinavian contender, leaving the Sweden-South Korea match at 1-0.
