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Drawing on previous evidence for affective generalization in face perception, the current research investigated the effects of facial similarity on automatic evaluations of unknown individuals who resemble a known person of positive or negative valence. Using 50% morphs that combined a known face of positive or negative valence with an unknown face of neutral valence, the morphed faces elicited the same automatic evaluations as the known faces they resembled. Automatic evaluations of known faces were indistinguishable from responses to perceptually similar unknown faces, suggesting that resemblance effects on automatic evaluations involve an assimilation of unknown faces to existing representations of known faces. Moreover, valence-congruent resemblance effects emerged for both positive and negative targets, suggesting that similarity-based activation of evaluative knowledge can override the affective positivity resulting from the higher fluency of processing familiar faces. Implications for research on face perception, transference, and processing fluency are discussed.

We employed the retrieval-practice paradigm to test the hypothesis that stereotypes are organized in a meaningful, valence-based way that promotes evaluative coherence. Replicating previous research, we demonstrated that the rehearsal of traits known to describe a target person produced enhanced recall of those practiced traits and reduced recall of other known but non-practiced traits, relative to baseline. However, both the availability of a group label that united the traits within a stereotype and the evaluative consistency of the practiced and non-practiced traits moderated the nature of these effects: although recall of non-practiced stereotypic traits that were evaluatively inconsistent with the practiced traits showed the typical pattern of inhibition, recall of non-practiced stereotypic traits that were evaluatively consistent with the practiced traits was facilitated relative to baseline. We conclude by discussing how the modular representation implied by these findings is functional, potentially fostering the momentary experience of evaluative consistency in person perception.

We investigated the impact of ingroup/outgroup categorization on the encoding of same-race and other-race faces presented in inter-racial and intra-racial contexts (Experiments 1 and 2, respectively). White participants performed a same/different matching task on pairs of upright and inverted faces that were either same-race (White) or other-race (Black), and labeled as being from the same university or a different university. In Experiment 1, the same- and other-race faces were intermixed. For other-race faces, participants demonstrated greater configural processing following same- than other-university labeling. Same-race faces showed strong configural coding irrespective of the university labeling. In Experiment 2, faces were blocked by race. Participants demonstrated greater configural processing of same- than other-university faces, but now for both same- and other-race faces. These results demonstrate that other-race face processing is sensitive to non-racial ingroup/outgroup status regardless of racial context, but that the sensitivity of same-race face processing to the same cues depends on the racial context in which targets are encountered. © 2011 Elsevier Inc.