Evidence for Distance Dependence and Out-Group Differences in Emotion Recognition

How do we navigate the sea of unfamiliar faces in a busy city? In this study,we investigated variation in ”reading the mind in the eyes” performance acrossin-group versus out-group faces at various distances involved in everyday socialinteractions. Across 2,830 participants from the U.S., we found that people havelower accuracy and greater negativity biases (a bias towards negative emotionssuch as angry or threatening) at greater distances. We also found that accuracyand negativity biases differed for in-group versus out-group faces, though theseassociations varied across participants from different racial groups. Though ourresults suggest that these effects are small for individuals, they may still influ-ence large-scale social outcomes. Specifically, when compounded across the manyinteractions that occur in cities each day, these effects could significantly influencecities’ social fabric and the quality of inhabitants’ social interactions.