Race biases in face recognition

Abstract The objective of determining the amount of face consciousness among people from the same races and those from different races is an interesting field of study. It has been discovered that most people are not able to distinguish the difference between two people who are of different racial backgrounds from theirs.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Race biases in face recognition specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More This is even more difficult if the person encounters both groups of these people at different intervals in the society. People of the same race are also believed to have the same habits and so, it is a common occurrence when people are judged based on their perceived racial backgrounds. Introduction Race bias in face recognition is a common issue among many people from all walks of life. For most people, it is always easy for them to identify the faces of people from their own races than from other races. The result of this has always been a misidentification which most of the times leads to incrimination of people who are innocent. People who have never interacted with other races experience difficulties in distinguishing the difference existing between people of the same race that they do not constitute. This is different when identifying people from their own race as they are able to tell the difference. One of the most important research questions in relation to this subject is whether the difference in visual signals is extorted from the same race, and other race facial characteristic. According to the research carried out by Bothwell and his colleagues (1989) a conclusion was drawn that â€Å"the image processing system is less sensitive to spatial relations between features in other-race faces than in the same race faces† (20). This conjecture is proved by the comparison of recognition capacity in faces that are upright and the ones which are inverted. The effect of face inversion is a deficiency in the roots ability and a reduction in the cognitive capacity of the observer or participant in the experiment.Advertising Looking for report on psychology? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Methodology The first step in this case, is to determine the sample over which the assessment will be carried out. This involves the selection of twenty people belonging to different races. A fifty – fifty difference in gender will be employed to make the outcome of the experiment more convincing and useful. The stimuli should consist of passport photographs taken from the front. They should have the black and white shade and categorized according to gender. The person preparing this test should ensure that none of these people has unique physical characteristics such as long hair, different style of clothing or even eye glasses. The other recommendation is that half of this population should consis t of one race and the other half the other race under consideration. Visual basic software is then used to describe these images to the people participating in the experiment. Seated at approximately one meter from the screen of the computer, the participants are requested to carefully examine the images. These are displayed randomly at an interval of about three seconds. A constraint is created such that three consecutive images should not for people from the same race. After a specific period of just running the images on the screen, the other half of the images that had been presented are displayed before the participants. The participants are not aware that the images being displayed are different from the previous ones and so they are asked to select a yes if they are able to recognize a face and a no if they had never seen it before. The results are rated on 7 point scale and finally the participants fill out forms describing their racial backgrounds including the racial chara cteristics of the community they grew up around. From the experiment, the following graph was plotted. Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Race biases in face recognition specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Discussion Form the graph above, it was clearly identified that first, the students were able to identify the aligned faces better than the misaligned ones. The rate of acceptance was however, higher amongst people of the same race in the aligned case. As for the misaligned faces, the rate of acceptance was lower in other races than in the individual race. The participants were able to recognize the people behind the images of the misaligned faces better when the person was from their racial background. People who grew up in neighborhoods with different races were able to recognize the person behind the images more accurately irrespective of their racial affiliations. This owe to the fact that they have interacted with people from many races to the extent that they can tell even in the event of the misaligned faces. Many researchers have suggested that people from different racial backgrounds have physical features and facial expressions that resemble. The conclusion drawn from the whole experiment is that, the amalgamated effects on the faces of the sample population were experienced more with the same race image compared other race faces, and the substance of this process of mis-aligning the faces demonstrate how the relations between people of the same race are more stimuli related. According to Yin (1968) â€Å"these findings provide direct evidence that the representations underlying the holistic facial recognition are coarsely defined, being able to accommodate two faces of a different race to a certain extent† (141). He goes on to explain that â€Å"these representations are considered specific to the extent that the whole procedure is more significant for faces with which one has considerable visual experiences referred to as same race or SR faces† (141). Besides that this mindset scholar made an assumption that â€Å"individuals in diverse society’s records that people of other races resemble exclusively in facial characteristics† (142).Advertising Looking for report on psychology? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More This is one of the reasons contributing to the problem of racial discrimination. The characteristics of most people are judged basing on the racial community they originate. As a result, most people have been complaining that they are being treated unfairly owing to the generalization of their racial characteristics. Blacks in the United States for example, are believed to be hooligans and as a result of this, a large percentage of them are jailed despite them being innocent. The best example of this is the case presented by Bothwell and his colleagues. A white woman was raped by a black man, and when this lady was given photos of the people who matched her description, she picked the wrong person. After ten years, this lady came up and revealed that all the people in the pictures resembled and so she just picked up any one of them. This is what race biases in face recognition entail. An understanding of this issue is important as it will prevent a recurrent of such cases. According to the results obtained from this experiment, the subjects or participants seem to be more precise on the when identifying the misaligned faces compared to the aligned ones. The interaction amongst the members of the same race, the race of the faces used as samples and the alignments showed a high level of importance as indicated by the projections. Another conclusion assessed from these projections is that the combined effect was more pronounced in the case of the misaligned faces more than the aligned faces. Most of the participants were able to identify the images based on the top part of the face. There is no significant difference in the results obtained when the faces are aligned for the races in question. Conclusion This experiment can suggest that most people identify members of their races when their faces are aligned. Most of them could not tell the difference while observing the lower part of the faces in the misaligned faces while a majority of them were able to make ap propriate judgments from the top part of the faces. Conclusions drawn from this experiment, and many others related to it is that â€Å"other-race effect is brought about by early categorization of race at the expense of individual characteristics† (Yin, 1968). The moment an individual is perceived to belong to a particular racial background; other traits they control become irrelevant as their identity is judged from this. Reference List Bothwell, R.K., Brigham, J.C., Malpass, R.S. (1989). â€Å"Cross-racial identiï ¬ cation†. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 19–25. Yin, R. K. (1968). â€Å"Looking at upside-down faces†. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 81, 141-145. This report on Race biases in face recognition was written and submitted by user Lexi House to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Arguments for Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS)

Arguments for Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) Free Online Research Papers Many arguments are put forward by Leon R. Kass to continue criminalizing physician assisted-suicide, stating that it is wrong for a doctor to ever harm a patient, yet is the terminally ill patient quality of life worthwhile when they are is reduced by being feeble and in pain? Two ethical principles support ending prohibition: The right to control ones own body and the physicians duty to relieve suffering. A lot of weight is placed on the Hippocratic Oath which states not to do harm. Kass asserts that allowing physicians to help with suicide would overstep their limitations and literally have a license to kill. This is both illogical and inciting. The author and bioethicist Dieterle argues that discontinuing life-sustaining systems is considered acceptable by society, yet this is a more definitive act by a physician than prescribing a medication that a patient has requested who can decide whether to take it or not, as he or she sees fit (Dieterle 129). Rather than characterizing physician-assisted suicide as murder, people should see it as bringing the dying process to a merciful end, or as Oregon calls it, â€Å"death with dignity.† Bioethicist and journalist, Boer, agrees that a physician who complies with a plea for final release from a patient facing death under unbearably painful conditions is doing the patient good, not harm, and â€Å"his or her actions are entirely consonant with the Hippocratic tradition† (Boer 530). There is an argument made by Kass that that permitting physician-assisted suicide would undermine the patient-doctor relationship. This is flawed reasoning because patients are not lying in bed wondering if their physicians are going to kill them. â€Å"The lethal dosage is only prescribed on request of the patient and on no other terms† (Manning 5). Rather than undermining a patients trust, it should be expected that the legalization of physician-assisted suicide would enhance that trust. Many people feel that they would have a greater sense of security knowing they are able to trust their physicians to provide such help in the event of unbearable suffering. It is also argued by Kass that it cannot be regulated in the sense that people with mental illness, comatose, or with depression will be able to get the prescription through proxy or when they are incompetent, but it is reported by Iwasaki that in every state which has legalized it, there have been strict regulations which requires at least a month and a competency hearing. Washington and Oregon have specified that assistance be given only to a patient who is competent and who requests it (Iwasaki 2). Therefore it has been shown that it can be regulated and it is not understandable that new states would not follow these standards. A study carried out a few years ago by the University Of Washington School Of Medicine queried 828 physicians (a 25 percent sample of primary care physicians and all physicians in selected medical subspecialties) with a response rate of 57 percent. Of these respondents, 12 percent reported receiving one or more explicit requests for assisted suicide, and one-fourth of the patients requesting such assistance received prescriptions (Rogatz 12). A survey of physicians in San Francisco treating AIDS patients brought responses from half, and 53 percent of those respondents reported helping patients take their own lives by prescribing lethal doses of narcotics (Rogatz 13). Every state also does terminal sedation. Clearly, requests for assisted suicide cant be dismissed as rare occurrences. There is no perfect solution to this problem. However, there are reasonable protections which can minimize the risk of abuse and help the greater good of people. All physicians are bound by the oath not to do any harm, but we must recognize that it isn’t harmful only to hurt them, but to refuse an act of mercy. Thus, helping out people should be recognized as a humanitarian act, and not be considered criminal. Boer, T A. â€Å"Recurring Themes in the Debate about Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.† Journal of Religious Ethics 35.3 (2007): 529-555. Dieterle, J M. â€Å"Physician Assisted Suicide: A New Look at the Arguments.† Bioethics 21.3 (2007): 127-139. Georges, J, B. D. â€Å"Relatives’ Perspective on the Terminally Ill Patients who Died After Euthanasia or Physician-Assisted Suicide: A Retrospective Cross-Sectional Interview Study in the Netherlands.† Death Studies 31.1-15 (2007). Iwasaki, J. â€Å"Oregon Assisted Suicide at Record High: Washington Discussing Rules for its New Law.† Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Jan. 2009). 13 Jan. 2009 . Manning, M. â€Å"Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide: Killing or Caring?† Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Rogatz, Peter. The Virtues of Physician-Assisted Suicide. Humanist (Nov.-Dec. 2001). 22 Jan. 2009 . Research Papers on Arguments for Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS)The Fifth HorsemanCapital PunishmentComparison: Letter from Birmingham and CritoInfluences of Socio-Economic Status of Married MalesGenetic EngineeringThe Relationship Between Delinquency and Drug UsePersonal Experience with Teen PregnancyBook Review on The Autobiography of Malcolm XThree Concepts of PsychodynamicRiordan Manufacturing Production Plan