The Face of a Nation: The Effect of Nationality on Face Memory and Perception

Abstract

Nationality is a pervasive group membership, and previous research has variously demonstrated its potency. However, little work has investigated nationality’s relationship with person perception, an area ripe for research in today’s globalized world. Thus, the aim of this thesis was to understand how nationality affects one’s perception and memory of others. I tested how randomly pairing faces with Canadian and foreign flags affected Canadians’ memory and trait evaluations for these faces and whether nationalism predicted ingroup favouritism. I also compared memory differences for ostensible national ingroup and outgroup members to that for university ingroup and outgroup members to determine the relative importance and strength of nationality over other social identities. Across three studies, I found that Canadian participants recognized faces randomly paired with the Canadian flag better than those paired with a foreign flag, suggesting that nationality labels can affect memory for others, which has important implications for cross-national interactions.M.A

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