Deepak, I have some insight on this question. There was a study regarding change blindness. One of the study's famous experiments was having a person ask for directions on a college campus. Then in the middle of this, a door would pass between the person asking directions and the student giving directions. What they found is that many people didn't realize the person had changed.
BUT, 100% of the people that did notice the change were the same age or younger than the person they were observing! So, they did another experiment to rule out the different possible explanations. They took young people and dressed them as construction workers. Then, they performed the experiment again with similar age groups. They found that the people that had noticed the change before no longer did! Why? Well, the evidence leads us to believe that people pay much closer attention to the details of people they consider to be similar to them. So, we notice fewer details when we are observing people of a group we consider our "out-group". In other words, we don't think we belong to the same group as the person we are observing. That is why asians all look the same to you :) I think the purpose of this is analogous to attention. We only learn about things we consider important. Or we only pay attention to things we think are important. So, for whatever reason, we think that out-group people are not as important to us, and we don't need to spend our brain's resources on remembering details about them. Dave On Jul 26, 2010 2:58 PM, "deepakjnath" <[email protected]> wrote: Mike, All chinese look the same for me. But for a chinese person they don't. Why is this? Is there another clue here? Thanks, Deepak On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:10 PM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]> wrote: > > David, > > T... -- cheers, Deepak *agi* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/> | Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription <http://www.listbox.com> ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
