Examining the links between the outgroup homogeneity effect and racial bias in pain perception

Recent work demonstrated that racial bias in pain care stems, at least in part, from a perceptual source (Mende-Siedlecki et al., 2019). Notably, this racial bias in pain perception seems to arise, at least in part, from disruptions in configural face processing. Differential engagement of configural processing has also been implicated as a core mechanism supporting other more basic social perceptual biases, like the cross-race effect (e.g., a tendency to show reduced memory for other-race faces; Hancock & Rhodes, 2008; Rhodes et al., 2009) and the out-group homogeneity effect (e.g., a related tendency to show diminished perceptual sensitivity to different faces from a racial out-group; Hughes et al., 2019). Here, we assess whether perceptual insensitivity to a) identity and b) pain in Black (versus white) faces are correlated with each other.