Expertise-dependent individualization of faces of one’s own and another visual phenotype and resulting generalization of threat associations: An ERP-Study

Abstract

Reduced individuation of other-ethnicity faces (outgroup homogeneity effect) results from overlapping neural representations due to low perceptual expertise. While established expertise for own-ethnicity faces leads to distinct neural representations and therefore lower repetition suppression between consecutive perceptions of different faces than of the same face, this distinction was shown to be absent with other-ethnicity faces. Here we attempt to replicate this result for the N170 repetition suppression. Additionally, to study psychological consequences, we ask if reduced individuation on a perceptual and neural level leads to the generalization of associations over members of a different ethnicity. Specifically, we investigate if the threat association of a single other-ethnicity identity results in pronounced LPP amplitudes elicited by different other-ethnicity faces not associated with threat