2-122 - Development and Reduction of Intergroup Biases

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Humans form biases in favor of ingroups and against outgroups. Such biases can have negative personal and societal consequences. Various bias-reduction approaches have been implemented in adults, but with modest success. One reason for the limited effectiveness is that by adulthood, social biases are too entrenched to change, suggesting a need to reduce them in childhood.

This symposium brings together four studies examining how intergroup biases develop in children and how they can be reduced. Papers 1 and 3 embrace a bottom-up perspective in which some intergroup biases have a perceptual basis with downstream social consequences. Papers 2 and 4 embrace a top-down perspective that considers how variables such as executive function and motivation influence bias reduction.

Paper 1 reports that children's categorization of faces by race predicts their implicit racial bias, suggesting that reducing children’s tendency to categorize faces by race may reduce intergroup bias. Paper 2 describes varied implicit bias reduction efforts and reports more success with older than younger children, suggesting that some interventions are more effective with more mature executive functioning. Paper 3 examines long-term effectiveness of bias-reduction efforts and reports that training preschoolers to individuate other-race faces results in reduction of other-race bias for at least 10 weeks. Paper 4 reports the counterintuitive finding that activating self-interest can reduce ingroup favoritism in an intergroup bargaining context.

Overall, the symposium offers new insights into the ways in which intergroup biases emerge during development and how they can be reduced.

Sub Unit

• Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Chairs

• Paul C Quinn, University of Delaware

• Kang Lee, University of Toronto

Individual Presentations

• Racial Categorization Abilities Predict Implicit Racial Biases in Preschool Children - Presenting Author: Peipei Setoh, Nanyang Technological University; Kristy Jia Jin Lee, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore; Miao Qian, University of Toronto; Paul C Quinn, University of Delaware; Gail D Heyman, University of California, San Diego; Kang Lee, University of Toronto

• Malleability of Implicit Intergroup Bias - Andrew Scott Baron, University of British Columbia; Presenting Author: Antonya Marie Gonzalez, University of British Columbia

• Long-Term Effects of Perceptual Individuation Training on Reducing Implicit Racial Bias in Preschool Children - Presenting Author: Miao Qian, University of Toronto; Genyue Fu, Hangzhou Normal University; Paul C Quinn, University of Delaware; Gail D Heyman, University of California, San Diego; Olivier Pascalis, CNRS; Kang Lee, University of Toronto

• Intergroup Bargaining Eliminates Discriminatory Behavior in Children and Adults - Presenting Author: Yarrow Dunham, yarrow.dunham@yale.edu; Katherine McAuliffe, Boston College; Michael Nick Stagnaro, Yale University; David Rand, Yale University