Recognizing faces from ethnic in-groups and out-groups: Importance of outer face features and effects of retention interval

People recognize faces from their own ethnic group more accurately than faces from other ethnic groups. White German (WG) and Turkish participants living in Germany performed an old/new recognition test with faces from several ethnic groups. The presence or absence of external features (hair, face contour) and retention interval (immediate versus 3 weeks) were manipulated. Own-ethnicity effects (OEEs) were found, with recognition accuracy and response bias varying across the different stimulus sets. The 3-week retention interval reduced accuracy for in-group faces but not for out-group faces, while the removal of outer features was more harmful to out-group faces than to in-group faces.