In fact, just as we have difficulty distinguishing between Chinese, Japanese or Koreans, they also have difficulty distinguishing us. We experience this situation, called the cross-race effect, more often when we try to distinguish between ethnic origins that are less similar to our own.
Apart from Far Easterners, we can compare blacks for this reason. Turks, on the other hand, cannot be easily distinguished from other ethnic origins such as Arabs, Armenians, Georgians and Greeks.
A scientific study was also conducted on this subject.
Scientists at Northwestern University showed 18 white female undergraduate students photos of faces of white, black, Hispanic, and east and south Asian men. They were then shown photos of the same faces as well as new people and asked to indicate whether they had seen each before.
Participants wore an elastic electroencephalography (EEG) cap containing 59 electrodes to record the electrical activity of their brains throughout the experiment. Researchers focused on event-related neural responses. As expected, participants more accurately recognized faces of the same ethnicity.
This is because we have more experience with members of our own ethnicity.
The face recognition function in our brain may give errors in different ethnicities that are slightly similar to us. Because the people around us already have similar features such as dark skin, brown eyes and auburn hair, the functions in our brain are used to distinguishing faces thanks to other details. The shape of the nose, chin, eyebrows becomes more decisive in face recognition. The brain synthesizes these details and makes facial recognition possible.
When different ethnicities come into play, distinctive features such as unfamiliar black skin and slanted eyes attract the attention of the brain and other details of those people are barely memorized. Because of these features, it is possible to recognize them easily. Therefore, when we see another black-skinned or slanted-eyed person, we think they look alike because they fit the pattern in our head.
Far Easterners do not have such a problem among themselves.
Because being slanted eyes is not decisive for them anyway, their brains work to recognize different details and they have no difficulty in distinguishing those from their own ethnic origin. In addition to the eyes, features such as white skin, straight and black hair make our job difficult.
If you live in a Far Eastern country for a while or watch Far Eastern movies frequently, your brain will improve itself by focusing on details in distinguishing the faces of people of this ethnicity.
This is not a disadvantage, it is an evolutionary adaptation that provides an advantage within the group. Discussions on this subject are ongoing and are examined within the scope of human evolution and psychology.
Finally; We would like to remind you that it would be unpleasant, even racist, to make this a joke.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4
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