Does the own-race advantage in face processing have a basis in holistic processing?

Abstract

Many authors have proposed that the own-race advantage in face processing is related to an enhanced holistic processing for own-race faces. We investigated this issue using two common tests of holistic processing. In Experiment 1, we implemented the part-whole task of Tanaka, Kiefer, & Bukach (2004) with HK Chinese and White Australian participants. White participants showed more holistic processing (a larger advantage for processing face components in the context of the whole face than in isolation) for own-race than other-race faces; however, Chinese participants showed a similar whole-face advantage for both races. In Experiment 2, we tested HK Chinese participants on the composite task of Young, Hellawell, & Hay (1987), using faces that varied only in configural face information. Unlike Experiment 1, Chinese participants showed stronger holistic processing for own-race than other-race faces in this task. Thus, whether enhanced holistic processing of own-race faces is observed depends upon the task.