Social Comparison Processes of Hispanic Students at Hispanic Majority Institutions.

This paper describes the types of social comparison used by Hispanic students at a Hispanic Majority Institution through two studies (N = 406). We found that students engaged in upward identification more often than downward identification, downward contrast, and upward contrast. However, when comparing themselves on an academic measure, downward identification and upward contrast became relatively more frequent. Additionally, downward identification tended to predict higher self-reported confidence about academic abilities than other types of social comparison.

Measuring the Contributions of Perceptual and Attentional Processes in the Complete Composite Face Paradigm.

Theories of holistic face processing vary widely with respect to conceptualizations, paradigms, and stimuli. These divergences have left several theoretical questions unresolved. Namely, the role of attention in face perception is understudied. To rectify this gap in the literature, we combined the complete composite face task (allowing for predictions of multiple theoretical conceptualizations and connecting with a large body of research) with a secondary auditory discrimination task at encoding (to avoid a visual perceptual bottleneck). Participants studied upright, intact faces within a continuous recognition paradigm, which intermixes study and test trials at multiple retention intervals. Within subjects, participants studied faces under full or divided attention. Test faces varied with respect to alignment, congruence, and retention intervals. Overall, we observed the predicted beneficial outcomes of holistic processing (e.g., higher discriminability for Congruent, Aligned faces relative to Congruent, Misaligned faces) that persisted across retention intervals and attention. However, we did not observe the predicted detrimental outcomes of holistic processing (e.g., higher discriminability for Incongruent, Misaligned faces relative to Incongruent, Aligned faces). Because the continuous recognition paradigm exerts particularly strong demands on attention, we interpret these findings through the lens of resource dependency and domain specificity.

When experience does not promote expertise: security professionals fail to detect low prevalence fake IDs.

Professional screeners frequently verify photograph IDs in such industries as professional security, bar tending, and sales of age-restricted materials. Moreover, security screening is a vital tool for law enforcement in the search for missing or wanted persons. Nevertheless, previous research demonstrates that novice participants fail to spot fake IDs when they are rare (i.e., the low prevalence effect; LPE). To address whether this phenomenon also occurs with professional screeners, we conducted three experiments. Experiment 1 compared security professional and non-professionals. Experiment 2 compared bar-security professionals, access-security professionals, and non-professionals. Finally, Experiment 3 added a newly created Professional Identity Training Questionnaire to determine whether and how aspects of professionals' employment predict ID-matching accuracy. Across all three experiments, all participants were susceptible to the LPE regardless of professional status. Neither length/type of professional experience nor length/type of training experience affected ID verification performance. We discuss task performance and survey responses with aims to acknowledge and address this potential problem in real-world screening scenarios.

Never forget a face: Verbalization facilitates recollection as evidenced by flexible responding to contrasting recognition memory tests.

Verbal facilitation occurs when describing a face improves its subsequent recognition; but there are several theoretical explanations debated in the literature. The results of the present studies support a relatively unrestricted, parsimonious theory that verbal facilitation occurs because describing a face supports recollection of several different facets of the face-viewing experience. This recollection is then demonstrated by flexibly responding to two competing types of recognition task demands. Participants studied a list of faces and, following each face, performed a nonverbalization task (Experiment 1) or described its features or traits (Experiment 2). Two subsequent recognition tests included intact faces, new faces, and conjunctions (each of which recombined features of two studied faces). Inclusion test instructions emphasized featural information: respond "yes" to both intact and conjunction faces (both of which contained studied features), but "no" to new faces. Exclusion test instructions emphasized configural information: respond "yes" only to intact faces (which were the only test items that matched studied configurations), and "no" to both conjunctions and new faces. Both yes/no responses and confidence ratings supported our hypothesis that verbalization improved discrimination between (a) conjunctions and new faces in the inclusion test, and (b) intact faces and conjunctions in the exclusion test. Additional secondary responses about face type elucidated that verbalization at study improves the ability to recollect either featural or configural information, depending on which type of response the recognition test required. We discuss these findings about practical applications of improved face memory in real-world contexts.

You shall not pass: how facial variability and feedback affect the detection of low-prevalence fake IDs.

In many real-world settings, individuals rarely present another person's ID, which increases the likelihood that a screener will fail to detect it. Three experiments examined how within-person variability (i.e., differences between two images of the same person) and feedback may have influenced criterion shifting, thought to be one of the sources of the low-prevalence effect (LPE). Participants made identity judgments of a target face and an ID under either high, medium, or low mismatch prevalence. Feedback appeared after every trial, only error trials, or no trials. Experiment 1 used two controlled images taken on the same day. Experiment 2 used two controlled images taken at least 6 months apart. Experiment 3 used one controlled and one ambient image taken at least 1 year apart. Importantly, receiver operating characteristic curves revealed that feedback and greater within-person variability exacerbated the LPE by affecting both criterion and discriminability. These results carry implications for many real-world settings, such as border crossings and airports, where identity screening plays a major role in securing public safety.