Phillis, Isabelle2024-07-122024-07-122022https://hdl.handle.net/2440/141597This item is only available electronically.This study examined the effect of surgical face masks and own-race advantage in age estimation accuracy and facial recognition of masked and unmasked strangers. To do so, participants completed an age estimation task of Black and White strangers, with half of the strangers masked and the other half unmasked. Following this, a facial recognition task asked participants to identify which strangers they had previously estimated the ages of. Results indicated that individuals tend to be inaccurate in their estimates of unmasked strangers by a Median of 6.26 years. Face masks were shown to harm age estimation ability of own-race strangers, with inaccuracy increasing by about 3 years when strangers were White. This suggests an own-race disadvantage is present in age estimation of masked strangers. Results also indicate that face masks reduce an individual's facial recognition ability of once-seen strangers. This is particularly the case when strangers are Black, as White people are more prone to say they do not recognise a stranger when they are Black and masked. This suggests that an own-race advantage exists when recognising the face of a once-seen masked stranger. These findings have important forensic implications, as they suggest that it may be harder for eyewitnesses to accurately estimate the age of offenders who wear masks during offending. This effect may be exacerbated if both the offender and eyewitness are White. Furthermore, it may be more difficult for eyewitnesses to later recognise previously masked offenders from a line-up, particularly if an offender is from a different race.Honours; PsychologyThesis