An 'other-race' effect in age estimation from faces

Previous studies have shown that, in person-recognition tasks, people performance better for gaces belonging to their own race than for those belonging to another race. Recently, however, this 'other-race' effect has also been found in a sex-discrimination task (O'Toole et al, 1996, Perception 25, 669-676). In the present study, we investigated wheter this finding extends to age perception. Caucasian and African participants were asked to estimate the age of Caucasian and African faces. The main result of this experiment was a significant 'race of subject' x 'race of face' interaction showing that Caucasian participants performed better at evaluating Caucasian faces than African faces. However, African participants performed equally with both type of faces. This result is explained by the Africans' time of residence in Belgium. This implication of this 'older-race' effect for age estimation is discussed with respect to eyewitness reports.