The Influence of Group Membership on Prioritization for Visual Awareness
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2018-07-03
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nl
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Abstract
As our ability to detect everything in our visual environment is limited, an important question focuses on how visual detection mechanisms are influenced by the social saliency of stimuli. In the current experiments, we investigated whether in-group information is preferentially detected for visual awareness as opposed to out-group information. Utilizing a breaking – continuous flash suppression (b-CFS) task, we measured the duration of detection of in- versus out-group associated symbols (Experiments 1 and 2), but did not find any differences between in- versus out-group information on visual awareness. In Experiment 2, we additionally measured the duration of detection of social group faces, and found evidence that Western perceivers preferentially detect Western (over Arabic) faces. However, for Arabic perceivers, we did not show such in-group prioritization effects. Rather than being dependent on low-level visual characteristics, visual detection mechanisms may be influenced by one’s own social group. These findings may have implications for understanding the origins of social biases.
Keywords: social identity, self-relevance, face detection, visual awareness, breaking - continuous flash suppression
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen