We know from previous research that people are generally better at recognizing faces and emotions from their own racial or cultural group (i.e, The Other Race Effect or The Ingroup Advantage). But why is that? One idea is that we might look at faces differently depending on whether someone is from our own racial or cultural group.

To investigate this, the researchers used eye-tracking technology to study how Dutch participants looked at emotional expressions on Dutch (ingroup) and Chinese (outgroup) faces. While judging which emotion was being expressed, participants’ eye movements were tracked to see which facial features they focused on. The results showed clear differences in visual attention: people looked more at the eyes and nose when viewing ingroup faces, and more at the mouth for outgroup faces. This suggests that we naturally use different strategies when trying to decode others' faces —depending on whether they’re part of our own group. Interestingly, these differences in how people looked at faces didn’t strongly predict how accurately they recognized the emotions. In other words, there isn’t one right way to read a face—different strategies can still lead to accurate emotion judgments.

This research extends our understanding of the Other Race Effect by showing that group-based differences in visual processing extend to emotional contexts. It also emphasizes the complex ways in which visual attention, group membership, and emotion recognition interact. The findings point to the importance of understanding how subtle biases in perception may influence our emotional understanding of others, with implications for cross-cultural communication and bias in social perception.