Cross-Race Effect

The Cross-Race Effect (also known as Other-Race Effect) describes the difficulty in recognizing faces, guessing ages, and reading emotion for members of another race. It makes it easier for a person to recognize someone from their own race. One hypothesis to explain this phenomenon states that because of our family and acquaintances we have more "perceptual expertise" which members of our own race and therefore able to recognize them and their emotions more quickly than people of another race. Through exposure to other races comes more expertise and the ability to recognize facial features more quickly.