Psychologists and social scientists have piled up tons of data on the ?cross-race effect,? which is pretty well accepted as fact now. In a nutshell, people are more likely to recognize (and correctly identify) a face of someone who belongs to the same race than the face of someone from another race. One study of 15 Latino students found the students were much more likely to recognize Latino faces than black faces. The study also found that this effect depends on the ?perceptual categorization of race.? The researchers used ?racially ambiguous? faces and still the subjects were more likely to recognize the ones they believed were Latino.

Now a new study finds that kindergartners and third graders are less likely to be able to pick someone out of a lineup if that person comes from another ethnic background. The study seemed a bit simplistic, but it did suggest that even at a young age, perceived outsiders blur together much more.

What the research doesn?t seem to do is explain why the cross-race effect happens. Is it unconscious racism, a belief that all people outside your ethnicity look alike? Is it that when you see someone of another race, you?re registering them as a member of that race instead of registering the facial characteristics you?d be noticing about someone of your own race? We need to know, not least because the cross-race effect makes accusers much more likely to provide a false identification of a criminal suspect of another race.