Free Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life by Douglas T. Kenrick

with whom we interact on a daily basis. When we do interact with members of outgroups, it is often at the group level rather than at the individual level (for example, if the members of an Amsterdam soccer team are taking the train from Florence to Naples, they need only distinguish the Netherlanders from the Italians). By analogy, unless you are an ornithologist, you may not know the difference between a black-capped chickadee, a boreal chickadee, and a bridled titmouse, and if someone pointed one out, you still might see just a small chattering bird.
    Are there times when it might be functionally important to be able to distinguish the members of other groups? Our research team investigated this question in a series of studies headed up by Josh Ackerman and Jenessa Shapiro. We reasoned that the typical tendency to mix up outgroup members might vanish when one of them is angry. We had several reasons for our hypothesis. For one thing, it would pay to take heed when someone near you is pissed off, because he or she might attack you. Unlike a member of your own group, who is linked to you and may even be a relative, an outgroup stranger has less to lose from doing you harm. For another, anger is very personal and particular—it typically signals a threat from one specific person (the one who is angry) to another specific person (maybe you). For a third, angry expressions are fleeting, and an angry person may try to hide those feelings, even while still thinking about hitting someone. So it is good to remember exactly which person was just flashing that angry look.
    To test the hypothesis that angry expressions would erase the out-group homogeneity effect, we showed our subjects photographs of black and white men whose faces wore either obviously angry or nonthreatening, neutral expressions. To make the task more challenging, we showed our subjects each photo for only a half second while also
distracting them with an abstract painting that appeared on the screen alongside the face. Afterward, we tested our subjects to see how well they could remember the faces they had seen. The test was sort of like a police lineup: Subjects had to distinguish between the photos they had seen and another set of similar faces.
    For neutral faces, we found the usual outgroup homogeneity effect. Our undergraduate subjects (mostly whites and Hispanics) were better at remembering unemotional whites than unemotional blacks, and they regularly gave false positive identifications of black faces. In other words, white people were falling prey to the “seen one, you’ve seen them all” problem. Something different happened for the angry black faces, however. People did not homogenize those faces at all. Instead, they were remembered as accurately as the angry white faces. In fact, when the task was especially mentally demanding—with the targets’ faces being flashed very briefly alongside a distracting piece of art—the outgroup homogeneity effect was completely reversed, and angry black faces were more memorable than any of the whites.
    These findings fit with the view that our brains allocate cognitive resources functionally—the mind frees up space to pay special attention to other people who might be especially pertinent to our survival or reproductive success. The reversal of outgroup homogeneity does not mean that we become less prejudiced when we are feeling threatened, only that threat makes us process information in ways that best serve our interests. Indeed, other research conducted by our team and by several different groups of researchers suggests that these same self-interested processes often boost stereotyping and prejudice.

Functional Projection
    One of Sigmund Freud’s many fascinating ideas was the concept of mental “defense mechanisms.” Freud thought of defense mechanisms as tools we use to protect ourselves from anxiety. If some unpleasant
memory is upsetting to you, for example, you can