Perception of race and ethnicity

Although hundreds, perhaps thousands, of studies have examined prejudice, stereotyping, and other processes that follow identification of another's race, very little information exists about the identification process itself. The purpose of this study was to begin to examine the process(es) whereby individuals determine the race or ethnicity of another person. Seventy-three students rated the importance of facial features and characteristics. We established that individuals report using skin color as the primary cue when making decisions about the race of another person. When asked about the importance of specific aspects of features such as nose color, nose fullness, nose placement on face, etc., individuals overwhelmingly rated color of features as primarily important. The importance of features other than skin color varied as a function of the specified target, but neither participant race nor participant gender was related to feature importance.