I finished writing the method yesterday. Haven't started the discussion yet because I haven't tested everyone yet, but I have made an awesome results table. I had planned to be finished the tests by this stage but, although I'd planned when to meet everyone, some people just didn't turn up, which is really not helpful. But never mind, my friend manged to rope in her younger brother along with one of her brother's asian friends, one of her brother's anglo friends and that friend's older sister. I'm still one asian guy short (because people didn't turn up!) but I think, if I can't find someone else, I'll be able to cut back the number of volunteers. I know that in a previous blog I said I already had the minimum (30), but I actually had 32, because I thought I needed equal numbers from all four groups. But one of the reports I found used not equal numbers of males and females within their racial categories so, if it's good enough for the scientists, it's certainly good enough for me. Now I will have 15 from each race instead of 16: 8 girls and 7 guys.
Also my last, rather incoherent blog (which had a couple of embarrassing typos, if any one's read the comments) mentioned that I was researching the different causes of the cross-race effect (which from now on I'll just call CRE or cre), but didn't go into details. Well, the actual reason for the CRE is not known, however scientists do have a couple of theories.
The most widely accepted one is that it's simply caused by lack of contact with the other culture; the observer just isn't used to the other faces and so is unable to recognise them as well. This is the reason I'm focusing on. I'm saying that as 16.9% of Sydney's population is of Asian background, Asian and Anglo teens in Sydney have a considerable amount of contact with each other. Therefore, if this theory is indeed the cause of the cre, there should not be a significant level of own-race bias present amongst this group.
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