| dc.description.abstract | The wisdom-of-crowds phenomenon refers to the greater accuracy for judgments made in
pairs or groups, compared to individual judgments. These effects have been found also for
face identification tasks. Collaborative decision making on face identification tasks improves
identification accuracy over individuals acting alone. However, no prior study has considered
how the race of the face and the participant impacts collaboration benefits. In the following
experiments, I addressed four principal questions to explore the parameters of collaborative
decision making. Specifically, the aim of this dissertation was to test if collaboration can
be a viable strategy for improving both own- and other-race face identification. In Experiment 1, East Asian and Caucasian participants completed a face-identification task on their
own and while working collaboratively as part of a same-race dyad (East Asian/East Asian
or Caucasian/Caucasian pairs). Collaborative decisions were completed as part of a social
dyad (virtually completing the task together) and as part of a non-social dyad (where individual score were fused independently, item-by-item). Here, I examined the baseline effects
of collaboration for East Asian and Caucasian race groups. First, I found that collaboration
improved both own- and other-race face identification accuracy. Second, I replicated previous findings that show comparable accuracy across social and non-social collaboration for
recognition of own- and other-race faces. In Experiment 2, I explored two potential factors
that could directly impact collaboration. First, I examined if the demographic composition
of the pair of judges, different-race (two participants of different races) versus same-race
(two participants of the same race) pairs, affected the benefits of collaboration. Here, I
found that generally collaboration resulted in equal performance across dyad composition,
but with a slightly lower performance of East Asian dyads on Caucasian faces. Second, I
explored the effect of self-reported individual other-race experience collaborative face identification performance and found no clear relationship between accuracy and self-reported
other-race contact as a function of dyads. Taken together, these experiments demonstrate
that collaboration can be a potential tool for improving for both own- and other-race face
identification accuracy. | |
