Ethnicity does not matter: Comparable reversed congruency effects for gaze stimuli from same- and other-ethnicity faces

In spatial Stroop tasks with gaze stimuli, the reversed congruency effect (RCE) refers to slower responses in congruent (i.e., a gaze pointing right presented on the right side of the screen) than incongruent (i.e., a gaze pointing right presented on the left side of the screen) trials. The nature of the RCE may stem from social attention mechanisms. In line with this social account, an increasing number of studies have shown that the RCE is modulated by characteristics of facial stimuli, such as social relevance or emotions. The present study investigated, through two cross-cultural online experiments, whether the RCE can be shaped by ethnicity. A total of 163 East Asian (Japanese) and European (Italian) participants completed a spatial Stroop task featuring East Asian and European faces. The two types of faces were presented either intermixed within the same block (Experiment 1) or in separate blocks (Experiment 2). The results revealed, in both experiments, a robust RCE, irrespective of participant or facial ethnicity. Overall, these findings offer new insights into the RCE and the boundary conditions for its potential modulation by social factors.