Reducing Racial In-group Biases on White American Children: The Impact of Epistemic and Moral Behavior

• In Event: Whom to Trust and How to Share: Children and Adolescents’ Social Learning in Intergroup Contexts

Abstract

There is a revitalized call and sense of urgency to redress racial injustices by understanding the developmental roots of racial biases. Recent evidence has revealed that children demonstrate early social (Dunham, Chen, & Banaji, 2013) and epistemic (Gaither et al., 2014; Kinzler, et al., 2011; Reyes-Jaquez & Echols, 2013) preferences for racial in-group members. Much of the current research, however, does not address what might reduce children’s racial biases in learning contexts. The current study examines whether White monoracial children’s racial in-group biases can be attenuated in response to epistemic and moral information about Black and White informants.

In Study 1, 4- and 6-year-old White children (N = 107) from Minneapolis participated in a brief intervention in which they heard stories of a Black speaker engaging in prosocial actions (e.g., helping others) in the Moral condition or competent actions (e.g., accurately naming animals) in the Competence condition. Before and after the intervention, children completed selective learning trials in which they were asked to selectively seek novel information from a pair of Black and White speakers. Children also completed a racial attitude task which assessed their preferences to associate with same and other race peers. Compared to their baseline preferences, 6-year-old children were more likely to selectively learn new information from the Black speaker over the White speaker after the intervention (OR = 2.2, p = 0.0001), and this effect was more pronounced in the Competence condition (p = .04). By contrast, 6-year-old children’s explicit social preferences for racial in-group members was reduced in the Moral condition, but not in the Competence condition (OR = 7.51, p = .002).

In Study 2, 4- and 6-year-old White children (N = 113) heard vignettes in which the White speaker either engaged in antisocial actions (e.g., refusing to help others) in the Moral condition, or engaged in incompetent actions (e.g., not knowing the name of a common animal) in the Competence condition. Preliminary results revealed that both negative moral and epistemic information reduced 6-year-old children’s selective learning biases after the intervention (OR = 1.41, p = 0.01), but their social attitudes towards racial outgroup members were not attenuated (p = 0.075). Interestingly, across both studies, neither the positive information about the Black informant nor the negative information about the White informant affected 4-year-old children’s learning decisions or social preferences. Regardless of the types of intervention, 4-year-olds were at chance in choosing which speaker to learn from, and they maintained their social affiliation bias for White children.

In summary, the current study examined factors that may reduce White American children’s social and learning preferences for racial in-group members. Across two studies, brief interventions had differential, age-related, impact on children’s evaluations. While 4-year-old children remained stable in their racial in-group biases, 6-year-old children appeared to make distinct use of epistemic and moral characteristics about racial in- and out-group members. This project may have direct implications for parenting and education practices that serve to reduce White children’s racial biases in learning and social contexts.

Authors

• Pearl Han Li, Duke Univeristy
  Presenting Author

• Charisse B. Pickron, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Melissa A. Koenig, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities