In earlier sections, two main theories of the other-race effect were reviewed: perceptual expertise accounts and social-motivational approaches. Perceptual expertise accounts suggest that other-race effect is determined by one’s experience with
individuals of own- and/or other-race. In contrast, social-motivational approaches suggest that other-race effect is determined by one’s motivation to individuate other- race faces, regardless the interracial experience. Both accounts explain some of the variance in the other-race effect, yet both have difficulty explaining all prior findings consistently. Some researchers argue that a lack of experience or lack of motivation alone is not sufficient to explain the other-race effect. Therefore, a new account – the categorization-individuation model (CIM) – was proposed to suggest that both motivation and interracial contact when combined can jointly affect the extent of the other-race effect (Hugenberg, Young, Bernstein, & Sacco, 2010).
CIM posits that other-race effect can be attributed to three potential factors: social categorisation, motivation, and perceptual experience with own- and other-race individuals (see also Hugenberg, Wilson, et al., 2013). The first factor, social
faces of other-races, which could be due to the category-diagnostic process on other- race faces, but also the identity-diagnostic process on own-race faces. The second factor, motivation, can contribute to the reduction of the other-race effect when an individual has been motivated to individuate other-race faces at the identity level as accurately as own-race faces. The third factor, perceptual experience, is associated with the performance of face memory, that is, that as the majority of one’s experience is with own-race faces, this can facilitate the recognition of own-race faces; in contrast, poor recognition of other-race faces can be attributed to limited exposure with other-race individuals.
The CIM proposes that the interplay of these three factors results in the other- race effect. Specifically, it highlights that interracial experience and motivation-to- individual can interact to affect the other-race effect, but that either of these two factors alone would not have the same effect. Particularly, CIM proposes that a higher level of interracial experience combined with elicited motivation is most likely to increase the recognition of other-race faces, yet without the motivation component, the perceptual experience would play little role in other-race face recognition, and vice visa with lower interracial experience; also, eliciting motivation to individuate other-race faces would alone have little effect in reducing the other-race effect.
To test this model in an American setting, Young and Hugenberg (2012) explored two potential factors as affecting the other-race effect on White participants. They measured interracial contact by using the contact questionnaire from Hancock and Rhodes (2008), and affected motivation by replicating the instructions directly from Hugenberg et al. (2007). Young and Hugenberg found that motivation instruction could reduce the other-race effect more when an individual reported higher interracial contact than lower interracial contact. In contrast, without motivation, higher interracial contact did not reduce the other-race effect. Thus, it was argued that interracial contact alone is insufficient to remove the other-race effect, but works in tandem with motivation-to- individuate to reduce the other-race effect. Moreover, findings showed that intensive motivation (i.e., angry facial stimuli) could reduce the other-race effect in both high- and lower-interracial contact participants, but the findings of no reduction in the other- race effect when displaying angry other-race faces was not considered to be reliable due to the flaws of stimuli design (Gwinn et al., 2015).
Pica et al. (2015) tested the CIM model on White and Black participants, asking them to look at grey images of neutral faces in a frontal view (Hugenberg et al., 2007; Young & Hugenberg, 2012). The results showed that other-race effect presented itself
in different patterns in White and Black samples. White participants with high interracial contact performed equally well in both no instructions and motivation
instructions conditions – that is, motivation did not significantly decrease the size of the other-race effect. However, Black participants with high interracial contact performed significantly better differentiating between Caucasian faces with motivation instructions then when they performed the task without motivation instructions. The amount of self- report interracial contact was greater in Black participants than in White participants. However, one must be cautious about generalising the effects of CIM to other race samples beyond the White participants. Beyond the White-Black context, Tullis, Benjamin and Liu (2014) addressed the interaction between motivation and interracial contact in the Caucasian-Asian context. Their findings rejected the CIM, indicating that the level of interracial contact did not affect the other-race effect differently with or without motivation instructions. These mixed findings could be due to the level of overall interracial contact differs between the above studies across different cultural contexts even within the United States –Blacks reported more interaction with Whites, while Whites reported lower contact with Blacks. This difference could also be due to the difference in social status of the race of face images (the social status of Blacks are generally lower overall than those of Whites, but the status of Caucasians and Asians are closer in the United States as well as in other Caucasian-majority countries such as Australia).
In sum, unlike with perceptual expertise accounts or social-motivational approaches, CIM does not serve as a competing mechanism; rather, it acts as an integration mechanism to explore the interaction of the interracial experience and motivations which could contribute to other-race effect. However, findings have been mixed depending on stimuli selected and the races of participants. There needs to be more empirical supporting evidence using more diverse racial samples in future studies.