The relationship between implicit racial attitudes and the cross-race effect

Abstract

Recent censuses within the Maltese Islands have indicated a gradually increasing rate of immigration from African countries. For this reason, an investigation into the attitudes held by the Maltese population toward non-White individuals, as well as the potential consequences of such attitudes is progressively gaining importance. The current study sought to explore the relationship between implicit racial attitudes and other-race facial recognition, taking into consideration the severe consequences an incorrect eyewitness identification may hold. In order to investigate this relationship, a quantitative methodology was adopted, by which 30 participants who had lived in Malta for a minimum of ten years underwent two computer-based experimental tasks. The first was a standard Implicit Association Test in order to gain a measure of implicit racial attitudes, whereas the second consisted of an incidental Old/New Facial Recognition Task. Results showed a generalised own-race bias, however, no evidence of the cross-race effect for facial recognition emerged. Upon further investigation into these two measures, it appears that a relationship between the two could be seen among the participants who displayed such a cross-race effect within facial recognition. However, as this sample set was small, this relationship was not found to be statistically significant. Future investigations may choose to replicate this study using a greater sample size in order to ensure a wider variety in results and more statistical power.