Poster #176 - Turkish Children's Social Preferences Based on Language and Race: The Role of Exposure

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Integrative Statement

Social categories such as accent, language, gender, and race guide children's social choices, and children tend to prefer individuals from their own social category (e.g., Aboud, 2003; Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007). Some categories are also more powerful drivers of social preferences, and for instance, even though 5-6 years-old North American children prefer native speakers and own-race children as friends, when these cues are pitted against each other, children privilege accent over race (Kinzler, Shutts, DeJesus, & Spelke, 2009). Language and accent might be more important in guiding social choices, as they have marked social boundaries throughout the human history. On the other hand, these tendencies might also be guided by children's relative familiarity with each dimension. Across three experiments, we tested Turkish children' social choices based on race and language, in an attempt to see whether children who are rarely exposed other races would still privilege language over race in their social choices.

In all three experiments, participants were 5-6 years-old monolingual Turkish speaking, white children. Across eight trials, participants were presented with pairs of children, who differed in the language they spoke and/or their race, and they were asked whom they would rather have as a friend. Experiment 1 (race condition, N = 20, Mage = 6 y 10 m) established that participants prefer to be friends with children from their own race (i.e., White), over children from a different race (i.e., Black), t(19) = 11.85, p < .001. Experiment 2 (language condition, N = 20, Mage = 6 y 1 m), showed that participants chose to be friends with speakers of their native language (i.e., Turkish), over children who spoke a foreign language (i.e., Spanish), t(19) = 2.87, p < .05. However, in Experiment 3 (race vs. language condition, N = 20, Mage = 6 y 2 m), in which race and language cues were pitted against each other, participants chose to be friends with own-race, foreign language speaking children, rather than other-race, native language speaking children, t(19) = 3.44, p < .01 (See Figure 1).

While our results replicated the findings of prior research showing that children prefer to be friends with other children who are from their own race, or speak their native language, unlike North-American children's preferences, Turkish children privileged race over language, and showed a tendency to prefer individuals from their own race, even though they spoke a foreign language. These results suggest that children's social preferences might be guided by the relative familiarity of each dimension, given that Turkey, in contrast to the United States, is a largely homogenous country in terms of race, but children are nevertheless exposed to different languages (e.g. English classes at school). The results point to the possibility that the role of familiarity in guiding children's social preferences might be more substantial than it was suggested before.

Authors

• Begum Koseler, Bogazici University
  Presenting Author

• Pınar Aldan, Bogazici University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gaye Soley, Bogazici University
  Non-Presenting Author