Children's Intergroup Attitudes at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Gender Typicality, and Social Class

• In Event: Intersectional Perspectives on the Development of Social Cognition

Abstract

Do children's intergroup attitudes vary as a function of the peers’ race/ethnicity, gender, gender typicality, and social class? The current study draws on social-developmental research and adopts an intersectionality framework (Crenshaw, 1991) to investigate racially/ethnically diverse elementary school children’s intersectional intergroup attitudes. We also investigated whether parent socialization around gender and children’s own reports of cross-ethnic/race friendships shaped these intersectional intergroup attitudes.

Children enrolled in 2nd (n=44), 4th (n=61), and 5th (n=64) grade (Mage = 9.61, SD = 1.21) were presented with a hypothetical classroom along with pictures of 32 students depicted by bitmojis that varied by race/ethnicity (African American, White, Latinx, and Asian), gender (boy, girl), gender typicality (conforming, non-conforming), and social class (rich, poor). Children were first instructed to select 10 students they would want in their ideal classroom. From the remaining 22, each child then selected the five students they would least likely want in their ideal classroom. Children were also asked to nominate friends and answer demographic questions about those friends. Parents/guardians answered 6 items about their socialization practices around gender (𝛼 = 81), for example, “how often they have had conversations with their child about how people can be treated differently because of their gender.”

Analysis revealed that children’s choices of the top 10 students to include and the bottom 5 to exclude in their ideal classroom were driven by the interaction between targets’ gender and gender typicality (2 (1) = 73.82, p < .001). The odds of gender non-conforming boys being in the top 10 were the lowest and the odds of this group being in the bottom 5 were the highest (all p’s <.001). We also found that boys compared to girls, demonstrated a stronger bias against gender non-conforming boy targets (2 (1) = 65.52, p < .001). Parental socialization about gender moderated the interaction between participant gender, target gender and gender typicality (2 (1) = 5.04, p < .05) such that girls who were highly socialized about gender reported reduced differentiation between girl and boy targets. Socialization did not change the results for boy participants. Analysis also revealed a target race/ethnicity-by-SES interaction (2 (3) = 16.67, p < .001) such that children preferred low SES targets in their top 10 choices especially if these targets were White and least preferred high SES targets especially if they were Asian. Inclusion or exclusion of African American and Latinx targets was not significantly affected by target SES. We then assessed whether participants’ cross-race/ethnic friends shaped these patterns and found a significant three-way interaction (2 (3) = 7.57, p = 0.05). For children who reported having more cross-race/ethnic friends, their choices for top 10 and bottom 5 were not as differentiated by race and SES. No grade differences found in any analyses.

Taken together, our work demonstrates the value of an intersectional approach showing that considering multiple social categories simultaneously and in context, we were able to uncover which categories figured into children’s decision to both include and to exclude and how they worked together.

Authors

• Negin Ghavami, Loyola Marymount University
  Presenting Author

• Manpreet Dhillon Brar, California State University - San Bernardino
  Non-Presenting Author

• Taylor Hazelbaker, The College of St. Scholastica
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rashmita S. Mistry, University of California - Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sandra Graham, University of California, Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author