When groups are not created equal: effects of group status on the formation of intergroup attitudes in children

Gender Stereotypes and Peer Selection in STEM Domains Among Children and Adolescents

Gender stereotypes are harmful for girls’ enrollment and performance in science and mathematics. So far, less is known about children’s and adolescents’ stereotypes regarding technology and engineering. In the current study, participants’ (N = 1,206, girls n = 623; 5–17-years-old, M = 8.63, SD = 2.81) gender stereotypes for each of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) domains were assessed along with the relation between these stereotypes and a peer selection task in a STEM context. Participants reported beliefs that boys are usually more skilled than are girls in the domains of engineering and technology; however, participants did not report gender differences in ability/performance in science and mathematics. Responses to the stereotype measures in favor of one’s in-group were greater for younger participants than older participants for both boys and girls. Perceptions that boys are usually better than girls at science were related to a greater likelihood of selecting a boy for help with a science question. These findings document the importance of domain specificity, even within STEM, in attempts to measure and challenge gender stereotypes in childhood and adolescence.

The developmental trajectories of racial and gender intergroup bias in 5- to 10-year-old children: The impact of general psychological tendencies, contextual factors, and individual propensities

Racism and intergroup discrimination are pervasive problems in human societies. Whereas several studies have shown that children show bias in the context of many kinds of groups, much less is known about how and when general psychological tendencies and contextual factors contribute to the manifestation of intergroup bias across development, and whether individual differences play a role. In the present study, we pursue these questions by investigating and comparing the developmental trajectories of intergroup bias in 5- to 10-year-old (mostly) White children (n = 100). We assessed children's liking and preferences towards 4 racial groups (White, East Asian, Black, and Middle Eastern) and towards 2 gender groups (male and female) in a within-subject design. We found that the young children in our sample showed a significant racial and gender ingroup bias, speaking to an early and strong manifestation of intergroup bias on the basic ingroup-outgroup distinction. This bias decreased with age. At the same time, we found considerable differences between the different types of outgroups from early on. Furthermore, there were remarkable differences between the developmental trajectories of gender and racial intergroup bias, highlighting the role of both social and contextual influences. Finally, our results did not reveal consistent evidence for the influence of individual differences on children's intergroup bias.

Which group matters more: The relative strength of minimal vs. gender and race group memberships in children's intergroup thinking

Experimentally created "minimal" social groups are frequently used as a means to investigate core components of intergroup cognition in children and adults. Yet, it is unclear how the effects of such arbitrary group memberships compare to those of salient real-world group memberships (gender and race) when they are directly pitted against each other in the same studies. Across three studies, we investigate these comparisons in 4-7-year-olds. Study 1 (N = 48) establishes the minimal group paradigm, finding that children develop ingroup preferences as well as other forms of group-based reasoning (e.g., moral obligations) following random assignment to a minimal group. Study 2 (N = 96) and Study 3 (N = 48) directly compare this minimal group to a real-world social group (gender or race) in a cross-categorization paradigm, in which targets are participants' ingroups in terms of the minimal group and outgroups in terms of a real-world social group, or vice versa. The relative strength of the minimal group varies, but in general it either has a similar effect or a stronger effect as compared to race and in some cases even gender. Our results support the contention that an abstract tendency to divide the world into "us" and "them" is a central force in early intergroup cognition.

“We’re All Equal” But Not Really: Perceptions of Racial Inequity Among Racial-Ethnic Minoritized Youth in the U.S

Racial-ethnic inequity is deeply entrenched in U.S. social systems, yet adolescents’ voices and understanding around inequity are not often directly examined. The current qualitative study uses focus group data from African American ( n = 21), Chinese- ( n = 17), Indian- ( n = 13), and Mexican- ( n = 17) origin adolescents ( Mage = 12.93 years; SD = 1.23; 51% boys) to provide insight on how youth navigate their attitudes and beliefs about these issues. Using a racial-ethnic socialization lens, we explore proximal (e.g., parents, peers, teachers) and distal (e.g., media, society) ways in which adolescents come to understand racial-ethnic inequity. Three themes characterized adolescents’ discussions. School diversity, of peers and of thought, and messages around egalitarianism were two prominent influences on their perceptions. A third theme related to perceptions of social hierarchies, which appeared to be shaped by stereotypes, peer interactions, and ideas about inequity itself. Emergent themes suggest that the school context is a particularly salient social setting that encompasses multiple sources of socialization (e.g., teachers, classmates, academics, climate), and parents, peers, and the media also play prominent roles.

Procedural (in)justice in children: Children choose procedures that favor their ingroup

Research has shown that both ingroup bias and concern for procedural justice emerge early in development; however, these concerns can conflict. We investigated whether 6- to 8-year-old children are more influenced by procedural justice versus ingroup favoritism in a resource allocation task. In our first study, children played a novel spinner game in which they chose among fair, ingroup favoring, and outgroup favoring procedures to decide whether a resource would go to an unfamiliar ingroup or outgroup recipient. We found that 6- to 8-year-olds overall chose ingroup favoring procedures. However, this tendency decreased with age; whereas younger children were more likely to select procedures that were advantageous to their ingroup, older children (7- and 8-year-olds) mostly chose fair procedures. Our second study investigated the motivations underpinning children's choices by testing whether children's fair procedure choices were in part driven by a desire to appear fair. Here we varied whether children made procedure choices in public, allowing them to manage their reputation, versus in private, where reputational concerns should not guide their choices. We found that from 6 to 8 years of age children chose ingroup favoring procedures and that this tendency was slightly stronger when choosing in private. Taken together, our research suggests that ingroup favoritism often trumps procedural justice in resource allocation tasks, especially for younger children and especially when reputation is not in play.

Verbally Highlighting Extrinsic Causes of Novel Social Disparities Helps Children View Low-Status Groups as Structurally Disadvantaged Rather Than Personally Inferior

As part of their “essentialist” intuitions, young children tend to form personal attributions for observed intergroup differences – attributing them to groups’ intrinsic natures or inborn characteristics. Much research has linked this essentialist view of social groups with prejudiced attitudes. However, less research has explored children’s capacity to form structural attributions for observed intergroup differences – attributing them to groups’ extrinsic circumstances or access to opportunities – or how structural attributions relate to social attitudes. Structural attributions could enable children to view low-status groups as extrinsically disadvantaged rather than intrinsically inferior. We were interested in whether verbally highlighting the extrinsic causes of novel social status disparities could support young children in forming structural attributions for them, thereby mitigating the formation of prejudice toward novel low-status groups. To investigate, we introduced participants (n=106 5- and 6-year olds) to novel social status disparities that could be attributed to either intrinsic or extrinsic causes, and we framed the disparities in either intrinsic, neutral, or extrinsic terms. We then assessed children’s attributions for the disparities (through two measures: explanations and interventions) and their social attitudes toward the groups (through two measures: friendship preferences and prize allocations). Results indicated that participants tended to provide mostly personal attributions overall but that extrinsic framing led them to provide significantly more structural attributions. Extrinsic framing did not significantly impact social attitudes overall, but exploratory analyses revealed that it impacted participants’ friendship preferences in particular. Together, results suggest that verbally highlighting extrinsic causes can disrupt children’s intuitive tendency toward personal attributions, with promising implications for their views of low-status groups.

Social sampling: Children track social choices to reason about status hierarchies

We tested whether preschool-aged children (N = 280) track an agents' choices of individuals from novel social groups (i.e., social choices) to infer an agent's social preferences and the social status of the groups. Across experiments, children saw a box containing 2 groups (red and blue toy cats). In Experiment 1, children were randomly assigned to Social Selection in which items were described as "friends," or to Object Selection in which items were described as "toys." Within each selection type, the agent selected 5 items from either a numerically common group (82% of box; selections appearing random) or a numerically rare group (18% of box; selections violating random sampling). After watching these selections, children were asked who the agent would play with among 3 individuals: 1 from the selected group, 1 from the unselected group, or 1 from a novel group. Only participants who viewed Social Selection of a numerically rare group predicted that the agent would select an individual from that group in the future. These participants also said an individual from the selected group was the "leader." Subsequent experiments further probed the Social Selection findings. Children's reasoning depended on the agent actively selecting the friends (Experiment 2), and children thought a member of the rare selected group was the leader, but not the "helper" (Experiment 3). These results illustrate that children track an agent's positive social choices to reason about that agent's social preferences and to infer the status (likelihood of being a leader) of novel social groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The Roles of Privacy and Trust in Children's Evaluations and Explanations of Digital Tracking

A "digital revolution" has introduced new privacy violations concerning access to information stored on electronic devices. The present two studies assessed how U.S. children ages 5-17 and adults (N = 416; 55% female; 67% white) evaluated those accessing digital information belonging to someone else, either location data (Study 1) or digital photos (Study 2). The trustworthiness of the tracker (Studies 1 and 2) and the privacy of the information (Study 2) were manipulated. At all ages, evaluations were more negative when the tracker was less trustworthy, and when information was private. However, younger children were substantially more positive overall about digital tracking than older participants. These results, yielding primarily medium-to-large effect sizes, suggest that with age, children increasingly appreciate digital privacy considerations.

Blurred boundaries between us and them: Do young children affiliate with outgroup members with shared preferences?

Children tend to assume that their ingroup members are more likely to share their preferences than outgroup members, but group membership and shared preferences need not be congruent in reality. The current study investigated 76 3- to 6-year-old children's baseline intergroup attitudes in a minimal group context and their subsequent attitudes after being informed that either (a) their ingroup, but not their outgroup, shared their preferences or (b) their outgroup, but not their ingroup, shared their preferences. Cues about shared preferences affected children's intergroup biases to some extent, such that children tended to like their outgroup more and to allocate resources fairly among their ingroup and outgroup when they learned that their outgroup shared their preferences. However, intergroup biases were robust in some measures, such that children reported high ingroup liking and demonstrated ingroup favoritism in behavioral attribution regardless of whether they learned that their ingroup or outgroup shared their preferences. Children were also administered measures tapping into cognitive flexibility, but there was no coherent evidence that children's cognitive flexibility was related to their initial intergroup attitudes or their subsequent intergroup attitudes after learning that their ingroup or outgroup shared their preferences. The current study demonstrates a nuanced picture of intergroup biases, such that these biases might not be entirely entrenched but can nonetheless be robust in the face of conflicting cues about group membership and shared preferences. Furthermore, the importance of investigating intergroup biases at the individual level, rather than only at the group level, is discussed.

APPLYING THE LIFESPAN MODEL OF ETHNIC-RACIAL IDENTITY: EXPLORING AFFECT, BEHAVIOR, AND COGNITION TO PROMOTE WELL-BEING

This paper presents an application of the Lifespan Model of Ethnic-Racial Identity (ERI) Development (see Williams, et al., in press). Using a tripartite approach, we present the affective, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of ERI in a framework that can be adapted for group and individual psychosocial interventions across the lifespan. These A-B-C anchors are presented in developmental contexts as well as the larger social contexts of systemic oppression and current and historical sociopolitical climates. It is ultimately the aspiration of this identity work that individuals will engage in ERI meaning-making, drawing from the implicit and explicit aspects of their A-B-Cs, to support a healthy and positive sense of themselves and others as members of ethnic-racial social groups.

PERSISTENT CONCERNS: QUESTIONS FOR RESEARCH ON ETHNIC-RACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT

Research on ethnic-racial identity (ERI) and its development has increased exponentially over the past decade. In this paper we discuss five questions that the Lifespan ERI Study Group grappled with in our effort propose a lifespan model of ERI: (1) When does ERI development begin and end? (2) How do we account for age-dependent and contextually-initiated factors in ERI? (3) Should there be a reference point for healthy ERI, and if so, what is it? (4) How do the multiplicities of identity (intersectionality, multiracialism, whiteness) figure into our conceptualization of ERI? (5) How do we understand the role of ERI in pursuit of equity, diversity, and social justice? We note that these are persistent questions in ERI research, and thus our goal is to present our collective reckoning with these issues as well as our ponderings about why they persist. We conclude with recommendations forthe kinds of research questions, designs, and methods that developmental science, in particular, needs to pursue.

Social attention across borders: A cross-cultural investigation of gaze cueing elicited by same- and other-ethnicity faces

The gaze-cueing effect is a robust phenomenon which illustrates how attention can be shaped by social factors. In four experiments, the present study explored the interaction between the ethnic membership of the participant and that of the face providing the gaze cue. Firstly, we aimed to further investigate the differential impact of White, Black, and Asian faces on the gaze-cueing effect in White individuals. Secondly, we aimed to explore, for the first time, the impact of faces belonging to different ethnicities on gaze cueing in Chinese participants. The results allowed to rule out alternative accounts and showed that White participants exhibit a gaze-cueing effect for White and Asian faces, but not for Black faces, consistent with previous studies. As regards Chinese participants, the overall findings suggested a stronger gaze-cueing effect for White faces than for Asian faces. The results are discussed with reference to differences in the perceived social status of the various groups, pointing to the need of taking into account different cultural contexts.

Race, Gender, and the Development of Cross-Race Egalitarianism

Over the course of development, children acquire adult-like thinking about social categories such as race, which in turn informs their perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. However, children's developing perceptions of race have been understudied particularly with respect to their potential influence on cross-race egalitarianism. Specifically, the acquisition of racial constancy, defined as the perception that race is a concrete and stable category, has been associated with increased awareness of racial stereotypes and group status differences. Yet, little work has investigated behavioral outcomes stemming from the acquisition of racial constancy beliefs. Here, we investigate whether the presence or absence of racial constancy beliefs differentially predicts inequality aversion with racial ingroup versus outgroup members for young children. White children (N = 202; ages 3-8) completed three sticker resource-allocation games with either a White or a Black partner shown in a photograph, after which racial constancy was measured. Results revealed that the acquisition of racial constancy interacted with partner race to predict inequality aversion outcomes in one game; however, age and gender also exerted strong effects.

Symbols and labels: Children's awareness of social categories in a divided society

AIMS

How and when children develop an understanding of group boundaries have implications for conflict resolution. When social divisions are not perceptually distinct, symbols become particularly important. Framed by the Social Identity Development Theory, this study was designed to assess children's categorization of symbols with conflict-related group labels.

METHOD

In Northern Ireland, 218 children (M = 8.14, SD = 1.83, range 5-11 years old) participated in a novel task designed for this study. The sample was evenly split by child gender and community background.

RESULTS

Children sorted symbols above chance with both the hypothesized national (i.e., British/Irish) and ethno-political (i.e., Protestant/Catholic) labels, showing a stronger association for the former. Sorting was also stronger for ingroup symbols, compared to outgroup symbols, and increased with age.

CONCLUSION

These findings reflect the potential role that a divided social world has on the development of children's understanding of conflict-related groups. The results also have implications for intergroup relations among children in divided societies.

Children's Intergroup Attitudes: Insights From Iran

Children generally favor individuals in their own group over others, but it is unclear which dimensions of the out-group affect this bias. This issue was investigated among 7- to 8-year-old and 11- to 12-year-old Iranian children (N = 71). Participants evaluated in-group members and three different out-groups: Iranian children from another school, Arab children, and children from the United States. Children's evaluations closely aligned with the perceived social status of the groups, with Americans viewed as positively as in-group members and Arabs viewed negatively. These patterns were evident on measures of affiliation, trust, and loyalty. These findings, which provide some of the first insights into the social cognition of Iranian children, point to the role of social status in the formation of intergroup attitudes.

Does group membership affect children's judgments of social transgressions?

Children judge in-group members more favorably than out-group members. They also judge moral transgressions as more serious and more worthy of punishment than conventional transgressions. Here we asked whether children's judgments of moral and conventional transgressions vary by the group membership of the transgressor (in-group, neutral, out-group, or self). In addition, we asked whether judgments of the transgressions would extend to the transgressors themselves, including cases in which the self was the transgressor. Results show that transgressions committed by out-group members were judged as being more serious and more punish-worthy than those committed by members of other groups. In addition, children judged out-group transgressors more harshly, and the self more leniently, than other group members. Overall, results suggest that group membership does affect judgments of transgressions and transgressors, with out-group members consistently judged the most negatively and the self consistently judged the least negatively. However, when judging the transgressor or the seriousness of the transgression, domain distinctions do persist even as group membership varies. Although, when assigning punishment, domain distinctions persist only when judging the transgressions of out-group members and neutral individuals. These findings demonstrate the powerful effect of group membership on the judgments of both acts and actors, indicating that when judging transgressions children consider not only the moral or conventional status of the act but also the group membership of the actor.

Acquiring group bias: Observing other people's nonverbal signals can create social group biases

Evidence of group bias based on race, ethnicity, nationality, and language emerges early in the life span. Although understanding the initial acquisition of group bias has critical theoretical and practical implications, precisely how group biases are acquired has been understudied. In two preregistered experiments, we tested the hypothesis that generalized social group biases can be acquired through exposure to positive nonverbal signals directed toward a novel adult from one group and more negative nonverbal signals directed toward a novel adult from another group. We sought to determine whether children would acquire global nonverbal signal-consistent social group biases that extended beyond their explicit social preferences, by measuring children's preferences, imitation, and behavioral intentions. Supporting our preregistered hypotheses, preschool-age participants favored small and large groups whose member received positive nonverbal signals, relative to groups whose member received more negative nonverbal signals. We also replicated prior work indicating that children will acquire individual target biases from the observation of biased nonverbal signals. Here we make the case that generalized social group biases can be rapidly and unintentionally transmitted on the basis of observational learning from nonverbal signals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Teachers' nonverbal behaviors influence children's stereotypic beliefs

The current research tested whether differences in teachers' nonverbal behaviors influence children's intergroup attitudes and stereotypic beliefs. In this study, 5- to 8-year-old participants (N = 96) were assigned to novel groups (marked by T-shirt color) and then viewed interactions between teachers and pairs of students who were also members of the novel groups. Across four interactions, the teacher directed positive nonverbal behaviors toward students from one group and directed negative nonverbal behaviors toward students from another group. After viewing the interactions, participants were presented with pairs of new students from the two novel groups and were asked three types of test questions. When participants were asked who was smarter, they selected new students from the group that had received positive nonverbal behaviors regardless of their own group membership. However, when asked who they would like to befriend, only participants who were assigned to the group that received positive behaviors selected ingroup members. On trials where participants were asked to select a partner on an academic task, participants' selections did not differ from chance. This study shows that teachers' nonverbal behaviors may be one source of children's academic stereotypes, including negative stereotypes about groups to which they belong. Moreover, these findings highlight the importance of subtle social cues in guiding children's beliefs about social groups.

Cultural Snapshots: A Method to Capture Social Contexts in Development of Prejudice and Stereotyping

The scientific identification of how social environments transmit intergroup biases is a transparently complex endeavor. Existing research has examined the emergence of intergroup biases such as racial prejudice and stereotypes in many ways, including correlations between racial diversity and children's prejudice, content analyses of features in the media, or experiments testing the influence of selected variables with unknown prevalence in children's environments. Yet, these approaches have left unanswered how the social environments that children engage with cause them to acquire racial prejudice and stereotypes. We provide a review of the existing literature on socialization of racial prejudice and stereotypes and then present a methodological approach that can be used to quantify and test causal relations between the features of children's social environments and intergroup biases. We provide examples of how this method has and can be used alongside a discussion of unique considerations when applied to child samples.

Racial/ethnic discrimination and well-being during adolescence: A meta-analytic review

This meta-analytic study systematically investigates the relations between perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and socioemotional distress, academics, and risky health behaviors during adolescence, and potential variation in these relations. The study included 214 peer-reviewed articles, theses, and dissertations, with 489 unique effect sizes on 91,338 unique adolescents. Random-effects meta-analyses across 11 separate indicators of well-being identified significant detrimental effects. Greater perceptions of racial/ethnic discrimination were linked to more depressive and internalizing symptoms; greater psychological distress; poorer self-esteem; lower academic achievement and engagement; less academic motivation; greater engagement in externalizing behaviors, risky sexual behaviors, and substance use; and more associations with deviant peers. Metaregression and subgroup analyses indicated differences by race/ethnicity, Gender × Race/Ethnicity interactions, developmental stage, timing of retrospective measurement of discrimination, and country. Overall, this study highlights the pernicious effects of racial/ethnic discrimination for adolescents across developmental domains and suggests who is potentially at greater risk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The Developmental Origins of Dehumanization

Dehumanization is a complex social phenomenon, intimately connected to intergroup harm and neglect. However, developmental research has only recently started to investigate this important topic. In this chapter, we review research in areas closely related to dehumanization including children's intergroup preferences, essentialist conceptions of social groups, and understanding of relative status. We then highlight the small number of recent studies that have investigated the development of this social bias more directly. We close by making a series of suggestions for future research that will enable us to better understand the nature and causes of this harmful phenomenon.

The Neural Development of 'Us and Them'

Social groups aid human beings in several ways, ranging from the fulfillment of complex social and personal needs to the promotion of survival. Despite the importance of group affiliation to humans, there remains considerable variation in group preferences across development. In the current study, children and adolescents completed an explicit evaluation task of in-group and out-group members during functional neuroimaging. We found that participants displayed age-related increases in bilateral amygdala, fusiform gyrus and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) activation when viewing in-group relative to out-group faces. Moreover, we found an indirect effect of age on in-group favoritism via brain activation in the amygdala, fusiform and OFC. Finally, with age, youth showed greater functional coupling between the amygdala and several neural regions when viewing in-group relative to out-group peers, suggesting a role of the amygdala in directing attention to motivationally relevant cues. Our findings suggest that the motivational significance and processing of group membership undergoes important changes across development.

Group Membership Influences More Social Identification Than Social Learning or Overimitation in Children

Group membership is a strong driver of everyday life in humans, influencing similarity judgments, trust choices, and learning processes. However, its ontogenetic development remains to be understood. This study investigated how group membership, age, sex, and identification with a team influenced 39- to 60-month-old children (N = 94) in a series of similarity, trust, and learning tasks. Group membership had the most influence on similarity and trust tasks, strongly biasing choices toward in-groups. In contrast, prior experience and identification with the team were the most important factors in the learning tasks. Finally, overimitation occurred most when the children's team, but not the opposite, displayed meaningless actions. Future work must investigate how these cognitive abilities combine during development to facilitate cultural processes.

'To the victor go the spoils': Infants expect resources to align with dominance structures

Previous research has found that within the first year of life infants possess rich knowledge about social structures (i.e., that some individuals are dominant over other individuals) as well as expectations about resource distributions (i.e., that resources are typically distributed equally to recipients). We investigated whether infants' expectations about resource distribution can be modulated by information about the dominance structure between the recipients. We first replicated the finding that infants attribute a stable dominance hierarchy to a pair of individuals when their goals conflicted and one individual yielded to the other (Expt. 1), and that this sensitivity is not driven by lower-level perceptual factors (Expt. 2). In Experiments 3-5, we tested our main hypothesis that infants' attention to equal and unequal distributions varies as a function of prior social dominance information. We first replicated and extended prior work by establishing that infants looked significantly longer to unequal than equal resource distributions when no prior information about dominance was provided about recipients (Expt. 3). Critically, following social dominance information, infants looked significantly longer to an equal distribution of resources than a distribution that favored the dominant individual (Expt. 4), and looked significantly longer when the submissive individual received more resources compared to when the dominant individual received more resources (Expts. 4 and 5). Together, these findings suggest that infants expect resources to align with social dominance structures.

Adolescents' perception of peer groups: Psychological, behavioral, and relational determinants

Adolescents' social cognitive understanding of their social world is often inaccurate and biased. Focusing on peer groups, this study examines how adolescents' psychological, behavioral, and relational characteristics influence the extent to which they accurately identify their own and others' peer groups. Analyses were conducted with a sample of 1481 seventh- and tenth-grade Chinese students who are embedded with 346 peer groups. Overall, females and older students had more accurate perceptions. In addition, lower self-esteem, higher indegree centrality, and lower betweenness centrality in the friendship network predicted more accurate perception of one's own groups, whereas higher academic performance and lower betweenness centrality in the friendship network predicted more accurate perception of others' groups. Implications for understanding the connection between adolescents' psychological and behavioral traits, social relationships, and social cognition are discussed.

Racial Categorization Predicts Implicit Racial Bias in Preschool Children

This research investigated the relation between racial categorization and implicit racial bias in majority and minority children. Chinese and Indian 3‐ to 7‐year‐olds from Singapore (N = 158) categorized Chinese and Indian faces by race and had their implicit and explicit racial biases measured. Majority Chinese children, but not minority Indian children, showed implicit bias favoring own race. Regardless of ethnicity, children's racial categorization performance correlated positively with implicit racial bias. Also, Chinese children, but not Indian children, displayed explicit bias favoring own race. Furthermore, children's explicit bias was unrelated to racial categorization performance and implicit bias. The findings support a perceptual–social linkage in the emergence of implicit racial bias and have implications for designing programs to promote interracial harmony.

Linking Prenatal Androgens to Gender-Related Attitudes, Identity, and Activities: Evidence From Girls With Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia

Key questions for developmentalists concern the origins of gender attitudes and their implications for behavior. We examined whether prenatal androgen exposure was related to gender attitudes, and whether and how the links between attitudes and gendered activity interest and participation were mediated by gender identity and moderated by hormones. Gender attitudes (i.e., gender-role attitudes and attitudes about being a girl), gender identity, and gender-typed activities were reported by 54 girls aged 10-13 years varying in degree of prenatal androgen exposure, including 40 girls with classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia (C-CAH) exposed to high prenatal androgens and 14 girls with non-classical (NC) CAH exposed to low, female-typical, prenatal androgens. Both girls with C-CAH and NC-CAH reported positive attitudes about being a girl and egalitarian gender attitudes, consistent with their female-typical gender identity. In contrast, girls with C-CAH had more male-typed activity interest and participation than girls with NC-CAH. Gender attitudes were linked to activities in both groups, with gender identity mediating the links. Specifically, gender-role attitudes and positive attitudes about being a girl were associated with feminine gender identity, which in turn was associated with decreased male-typed activity interests and participation, and increased female-typed activity interests. Our results are consistent with schema theories, with attitudes more closely associated with gender identity than with prenatal androgens.

“I Mean, We’re Guys”

For young men, the transition to adulthood may be a time of heightened adherence to traditional gender roles and norms of masculinity. However, recent research with young men in gender-specific contexts has indicated that some contexts support a construction of masculinity that is more inclusive. Through a theoretical thematic analysis of interviews with young men in their first week at an all-male trade school, we explored if and how participants talked about gender and its role in their lives, how these discussions of gender may reflect individual gender ideologies, and how these discussions may inform participants’ experiences in particular developmental contexts. The themes we identified included the following: Becoming a man as an active process, experiences of male embodiment of size and strength, intersections of school identity and being a man, students’ perceptions of their all-male school environment and what it means to not have female classmates, and their reflections on the parts of themselves they see as feminine. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research with adolescents and young adults in relation to gender, relationships, and professional development.

Children's perceptions of group variability as a function of status

Two studies focused on perceived ingroup and outgroup variability in children as a function of status. In the first study, 7- and 9-year-old White and Black children distributed White and Black faces along the levels of several dimensions. White children perceived more ingroup than outgroup variability, whereas Black children perceived more outgroup than ingroup variability. In addition, White children favored their ingroup, whereas Black children did not. In a second study, 7- and 9-year-old boys and girls distributed ingroup and outgroup faces along the levels of several dimensions. As expected, boys displayed outgroup homogeneity and girls did not. The consequences of these findings are discussed.

Emerging ethnic identity and interethnic group social preferences in middle childhood: Findings from the Children of Immigrants Development in Context (CIDC) study

This study characterizes several aspects of emerging ethnic identity in childhood and its associations with interethnic group social preferences. Understanding these processes is important, as early interethnic group social practices may form a foundation for later interethnic group attitudes and behaviors in adolescence. Children of Cambodian, Dominican, and Portuguese heritage (aged 6—12 years) consistently and accurately identified with labels of their family's nationality of origin across the three study years, and reported strong ethnic pride. In support of existing developmental models of ethnic identity in adolescence, older children demonstrated greater ethnic identity exploration than younger children. Importantly, for second-generation children, a positive sense of ethnic identity was not only associated with ingroup social preferences, but also ethnic outgroup social preferences. Findings are discussed with regard to existing models of ethnic identity development.

Effects of physical atypicality on children's social identities and intergroup attitudes

Individuals vary in the degree to which they are representative, or typical, of their social groups. To investigate the effects of atypicality on intergroup attitudes, elementary-school-age children ( N = 97) attending a summer school program were assigned to novel color groups that included typical (blue or green) and atypical (light blue or light green) members. Children's state self-esteem, ingroup identification, and intergroup attitudes (e.g., trait ratings, evaluations, peer preferences) were assessed following several weeks in the classroom. Results indicated that atypicality primarily affected children's views of their ingroup. Among younger (but not older) children, atypical group members viewed themselves as more similar to — but less happy being a member of — their ingroup than typical group members.

Children’s attitudes towards an atypical member of an ethnic in-group

Given that children have a strong bias towards their in-group, this study examined how children respond to a group member who is revealed to have negative qualities. One hundred and twenty Anglo-Australian children who were 6, 9, or 12 years of age heard a story about an (in-group) Anglo-Australian boy and a (out-group) Chinese boy who were good friends or bad enemies. In addition, the story characters displayed both positive and negative traits, and both enacted a positive and a negative behaviour. The results revealed that, as they increased in age, the children remembered more of the in-group character’s negative versus positive traits, saw themselves as increasingly dissimilar to him, and they liked him less, whereas they remembered more of the out-group character’s positive versus negative traits, saw themselves as increasingly similar to him, and liked him more. Contrary to expectations, the story characters’ relationship did not systematically impact on the children’s responses. The results are discussed in terms of the extent of support provided for social identity development theory.

Promoting children's positive intergroup attitudes towards stigmatized groups: Extended contact and multiple classification skills training

Two studies were conducted to evaluate interventions, based upon the extended contact hypothesis and multiple classification skills training, which aimed to promote children's positive intergroup attitudes towards two stigmatized groups. Study 1 tested whether extended contact and multiple classification skills training changed out-group attitudes towards the disabled among 6—9 year-old children. Out-group attitudes were significantly more positive only in the extended contact condition compared to the control. Study 2 involved four conditions: control, extended contact, modified multiple classification skills training and a combination of both interventions. Again, only the 6—11 year-old children who experienced the extended contact interventions (extended contact and combined) showed significantly more positive attitudes towards the refugee out-group compared to the control. The implications of these findings for the development of prejudice-reduction strategies in children will be discussed.

Developmental Intergroup Theory

Social stereotyping and prejudice are intriguing phenomena from the standpoint of theory and, in addition, constitute pressing societal problems. Because stereotyping and prejudice emerge in early childhood, developmental research on causal mechanisms is critical for understanding and controlling stereotyping and prejudice. Such work forms the basis of a new theoretical model, developmental intergroup theory (DIT), which addresses the causal ingredients of stereotyping and prejudice. The work suggests that biases may be largely under environmental control and thus might be shaped via educational, social, and legal policies.

Implicit Racial Biases in Preschool Children and Adults From Asia and Africa

This research used an Implicit Racial Bias Test to investigate implicit racial biases among 3- to 5-year-olds and adult participants in China (N = 213) and Cameroon (N = 257). In both cultures, participants displayed high levels of racial biases that remained stable between 3 and 5 years of age. Unlike adults, young children's implicit racial biases were unaffected by the social status of the other-race groups. Also, unlike adults, young children displayed overt explicit racial biases, and these biases were dissociated from their implicit biases. The results provide strong evidence for the early emergence of implicit racial biases and point to the need to reduce them in early childhood.