Our extensive experience extracting visual information from faces is suggested to explain our remarkable face processing abilities. Whereas our exposure to hundreds of thousands of faces is often invoked to explain the impact of such expertise, the impacts of individual differences, such as variations in interracial contact, are seldom considered. Growing up in neighborhoods varying in racial diversity may present opportunities for exposure to diverse face exemplars and may differentially shape our face perception system. While previous studies exploring the impacts of cross-race exposure often focus on racial attitudes, little is known about how exposure to racial diversity influences general face perception and social cognition abilities. In this dissertation, I investigate whether and how interracial contact shapes general face processing and social cognitive abilities. In Chapter 1, I review literature on how social experience shapes face perception, and argue that childhood and current interracial contact may influence one's face perception system in different ways. In Chapter 2, I present neuroimaging evidence of the impact of interracial contact during childhood on face processing and social cognitive engagement. In Chapters 3 and 4, I investigate how the impact of childhood and current interracial contact manifests behaviorally in the domains of face perception and social cognitive engagement, respectively. Taken together, the current work provides a novel perspective on the impacts of childhood and current interracial exposure on face perception and social cognition at both a behavioral and neuroscientific level.
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