Racial Bias in Eyewitness Identification?

That black faces are recognized more poorly by white than by black observers was docu-mented by Ma.plass & Kravitz (1969), who discussed implications of this phenomenon for inequi-ties in criminal proceedings involving heteroracial eyewitness identification. Their results are summarized in figures 1 (for observers at a predominantly white university) and 2 (for observers at a predominantly black university). Before we attempt to use this information it is important to know whether the differential recognition performance suggested in their data occurs for both white and black faces and observers, and whether it is specific to certain types of recognition memory tasks. Experimental procedures for studying recognition memory come very close to the tasks required of persons giving eyewitness identification testimony. When the eyewitness peruses a series of photographs, looking for