Children as young as age three may show implicit bias against people of other races, a new study shows. But early intervention?before this type of bias has become entrenched?can dramatically reduce racism in children.
The study, published in the journal Child Development, focused on reducing kids’ subconscious negative and positive associations with different races. These implicit biases can arise when kids are exposed more to their own race, while explicit biases (which refers to preferences, stereotypes and prejudices that they’re more aware of) tend to be learned socially from adults, peers and the media.
For the study, researchers from OISE and their international colleagues worked with 95 Chinese preschool kids in China with no prior exposure to people of other races. They measured the kids? implicit racial biases at the beginning of the study and found that these kids automatically associated black people with negative emotions and Chinese people with positive emotions. The children in the study were randomly assigned to three groups and taught to differentiate either five black people, five white people or five Chinese people on a touchscreen app, going by their individual facial characteristics. The training was repeated for the group taught to differentiate black people. ?A second session a week later seemed to act like a booster shot, producing measurable differences in implicit bias 60 days later,” said Gail Heyman, a professor of psychology...