Abstract: The own-race effect refers to the finding that faces of one’s own race are better recognized than faces of other less familiar race. Plenty of explanations of this effect can be grouped into three categories: The Contact Hypothesis and the Utilitarian Analysis originate from social cognition; the Multidimensional Space Theory and the Configural-featural Hypothesis center on representation of faces; the Cognitive Disregard and Attention, the Level of Processing, the In-group/Out-group Model and the Dual-process Approach focus on face processing. All of existing theories are distinct but connected with each others. We argue that these theories fail to provide a convincing explanation to the own-race effect. Researches that directly manipulate possible factors influencing the own-race effect are needed in the future

Key words: face recognition, own-race effect, social cognition, representation of faces, face processing