The current studies assessed the phenomenological basis of the cross-race effect by examining predictions of various social-cognitive mechanisms within a dual-process framework for both the perception (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 2) of own- and other-race faces. Taken together, the current studies demonstrated that differential performance on own-race faces was largely due to qualitative differences in the encoding of facial information represented by a recollection process. Furthermore, false recollections with high ratings of confidence occurred more often when participants encoded and responded to unfamiliar other-race faces. The theoretical implications of these findings for the phenomenology of skilled perceptual-memory are discussed, and the applied consequences of the cross-race effect as an encoding-based phenomenon are considered.