The Effects of Categorical Information on Memory of Faces of Different Age Groups
Date
2009
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
The purpose of the current study is to examine the effect of social cues on face perception and memory. While previous studies have found memory distortions involving, gender, and emotion, the current study examines whether memory for the age of a face will be distorted in the direction of a social description implying either young or old ages. Participants saw a series of 12 faces along with a phrase applicable to a young, middle-aged or old individual. After a distraction task, participants were asked to distinguish between the original face they saw and an age-morph version, morphed in the direction of the social description. Results indicated that young descriptions caused participants to remember a target face as being younger. Our results also showed that female faces were more often remembered as younger than the original face, while male faces were more often misremembered as being older. Finally, our study revealed that distortions in face reading occur in both face perception and in face recognition.