"There appears to be a critical phase shortly after an other-race face appears that determines whether or not that face will be remembered or forgotten," Lucas says. "In other words, the process of laying down a memory begins almost immediately after one first sees the face."
Previous research has associated this very early phase -- what is known as the N200 brain potential -- with the perceptual process of individuation. That process involves identifying personally unique facial features such as the shape of the eyes and nose and the spatial configuration of various facial features."
Why is individuation so fragile for other-race faces? One possibility, the researchers say, is that many people simply have less practice seeing and remembering other-race faces.
"People tend to have more frequent and extensive interactions with same-race than with other-race individuals, particularly racial majority members," Lucas says. As a result, their brains may be less adept at finding the facial information that distinguishes other-race faces from one another compared to distinguishing among faces of their own racial group.
Another possible explanation involves "social categorization," or the tendency to group others into social categories by race. "Prior research has found that when we label and group others according to race we end up focusing more on attributes that group members tend to have in common -- such as skin color -- and less on attributes that individuate one group member from others," Lucas says.
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