People typically demonstrate poorer recognition for faces from racial outgroups compared to ingroups, a phenomenon known as the cross-race recognition deficit (CRD). In the present research, we tested one influential account of this effect: the diagnostic-features model. This model proposes that, through experience, the perceptual system becomes tuned to race-specific diagnostic features (e.g., eyes for White faces, nose for Black faces), and that directing attention to these features can reduce the CRD. We systematically tested this prediction across five studies (N = 736) using face stimuli drawn from six databases. In Studies 1 to 4, White (Portuguese) participants completed old/new recognition tasks with both White and Black faces, using either fixation crosses (Studies 1, 2, 4) or explicit word cues (Study 3) to direct attention to the eyes or nose. Study 5 extended the design in three ways: it recruited UK-born participants, included both White and Black perceivers, and used both male and female faces, thereby more closely aligning the design with the original studies while adding methodological improvements. Across all five studies, we consistently observed the CRD, but found no credible evidence that directing attention to putatively diagnostic features modulated the CRD, with Bayes factors providing strong evidence against this effect. The absence of a fixation effect held equally for White and Black perceivers and for male and female faces. Together, these findings are difficult to reconcile with the diagnostic-features account as originally formulated, while remaining compatible with the more limited possibility that face individuation relies on more similar information across racial groups than the account assumes.

This article explores how the mental states and processes of the living influence how they think of the dead. In two studies (N = 300), we manipulated participants’ attitudes towards certain topics and tested whether they projected their attitudes onto the minds of dead people they knew. Indeed, participants who were prompted to think favourably or unfavourably about a certain topic imagined that the other (dead) person would share their attitude. Implications are discussed in terms of how people use similar social cognition tools to think about the living and the dead and of how people’s mental representations of the dead are malleable and sensitive to context. Finally, possibilities are laid out for further research on the social psychology of thinking about dead people.

People often think of other people who have died, and yet this is an underexplored area of social psychology. We discuss the ways in which the living think of the dead (e.g., how they remember or imagine them), and how the mental processes and states of the living affect that construal. Moreover, we discuss how thinking of the dead can influence the behaviors and thoughts of the living. Throughout the paper, new hypotheses are laid out, setting an agenda for future research. Moreover, a fundamental question is discussed: Is there something special in how the living think of the dead, or are those thought processes the same as those involved in how the living think of each other?

People are highly skilled at recognizing familiar faces due to the development of identity representations that are invariant to viewpoint and low-level features. However, how such view-invariant representations emerge for unfamiliar faces remains debated. This EEG study examined the neurophysiological basis of face learning, and how viewpoint generalization is shaped by experience (i.e., increasing familiarity) and stimulus realism. Adult participants performed an identity-matching task with novel faces varying along a realism continuum, from photographs to less and more abstract artistic styles (Renaissance vs. Cubism). Identity (same vs. different) and viewpoint (repeated vs. changed) were orthogonally manipulated within face pairs. Early face structural encoding (N170; 150-190 ms) was modulated by face realism and by viewpoint-related perceptual demands. The subsequent N250r (220-270 ms) was sensitive to the formation of viewpoint-invariant identity representations in memory, with different temporal dynamics across face types: viewpoint tolerance increased gradually for photographs with repeated exposure, whereas it emerged earlier for stylized faces. After repeated exposure, a reliable N250r was also observed for unseen, novel views, suggesting that learning supports progressively more stable and potentially more abstract identity representations. These findings are discussed in light of stimulus structure and the role of top-down processes in the formation of view-invariant representations.

Face typicality and distinctiveness are key facial attributes that influence face recognition performance and the formation of social impressions. The present study aimed to provide normative data for these dimensions, offering a useful resource for face recognition research. Using a 7-point Likert scale, adult participants rated 304 front-facing faces from the Glasgow Unfamiliar Face Database (GUFD) for typicality–distinctiveness. Results indicated that the subjective rating method produced reliable estimates, with meaningful variability observed along the typicality–distinctiveness continuum. Highly distinctive faces were more sparsely represented in the database. These norms can support principled stimulus selection and improved methodological control in empirical research with faces.