Faculty Publications
Adaptation to Racial Content of Emergent Race Faces: Gradient Shift or Peak Shift?
Document Type
Conference
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Proceedings of Fechner Day
Volume
25
Abstract
At the heart of stereotypes, attitudes, and misidentifications involving race is the question of how faces are initially categorized according to race. We examined racial classification using a continuum of morphed faces resulting from African-American and Caucasian 'parent' faces whereas an emergent Hispanic race is perceived at the center of the continuum. Using the method of adaptation, observers adapted to either a novel African-American or a Caucasian face prior to classifying race. A peak shift was found similar to stimulus discrimination training in animal subjects (Hanson, 1959). These results were unexpected as it has been commonly thought that adaptation to faces results in a gradient shift (MacLin & Webster,2001), and the fact that no discrimination training was used to acquire the peak shift. Results are discussed in terms of Helson's (1964) adaptation level theory. The authors conclude that psychophysics can be effectively used to answer social psychological questions.
Department
Department of Psychology
Original Publication Date
1-1-2009
Recommended Citation
MacLin, M. Kimberly; MacLin, Otto; and Peterson, Dwight, "Adaptation to Racial Content of Emergent Race Faces: Gradient Shift or Peak Shift?" (2009). Faculty Publications. 6545.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/facpub/6545
