Learning (not) to talk about race: When older children underperform in social categorization.

Abstract

The present research identifies an anomaly in sociocognitive development, whereby younger children (8 and 9 years) outperform their older counterparts (10 and 11 years) in a basic categorization task in which the acknowledgment of racial difference facilitates performance. Though older children exhibit superior performance on a race-neutral version of the task, their tendency to avoid acknowledging race hinders objective success when race is a relevant category. That these findings emerge in late childhood, in a pattern counter to the normal developmental trajectory of increased cognitive expertise in categorization, suggests that this anomaly indicates the onset of a critical transition in human social development.Keywords: social development, categorization, regulatory behavior, stereotype knowledge, social normsIn the typical trajectory of cognitive development, children tend to improve on problem-solving tasks as they get older due to, among other factors, superior memory capacity, more effective information processing, and greater facility with categorization processes (Case & Okamoto, 1996;Inhelder & Piaget, 1958;Kail, 2004). Accordingly, it is rarely the case that younger children perform better than older children on any cognitive task. We report one such anomaly in which younger children outperform older children on a social categorization task in which performance efficiency comes at the expense of acknowledging racial difference.As any parent who has experienced the social discomfort of a child unselfconsciously and publicly pointing out a stranger's race can attest, talking about race-even in the context of an accurate, diagnostic physical description-is often considered normatively inappropriate (Norton, Sommers, Apfelbaum, Pura, & Ariely, 2006). It is clear, however, that children become aware of social categories such as race at a very young age. Infants as young as 6 months old can perceptually discriminate between racial groups (Katz & Kofkin, 1997), by preschool most children can accurately identify others' membership in racial categories (Aboud, 2003), and at the age of 5 children begin to demonstrate knowledge of some social stereotypes (Ambady, Shih, Kim, & Pittinsky, 2001). Awareness of moral and social conventions, however, develops somewhat later. By 10 years of age, most children have internalized social and moral norms (Piaget, 1932;Turiel, 2006) and can effectively take the perspective of others and engage in selfpresentation (Aloise-Young, 1993;Banerjee, 2002;Carpendale & Chandler, 1996;Selman, 1980). These developments are accompanied by a greater understanding of abstract ideas, which in the domain of race include discrimination and the proscription of prejudice (Brown & Bigler, 2005;McKown & Weinstein, 2003;Rutland, 2004;Rutland, Cameron, Milne, & McGeorge, 2005;Verkuyten, Kinket, & van der Wielen, 1997).The present research examines age group differences in children's tendency to frankly acknowledge versus strategically avoid race. We sought to investigate whether, after approxima...

Learning to control ethnic intergroup bias in childhood

“…Children with high ToSM were able to use this understanding to inform their exclusion judgments of individual group members. This finding suggests that ToSM may be important to children's ability to understand group norms about showing explicit bias and their control of explicit intergroup bias (Rutland, 2004;Rutland et al, 2005;Apfelbaum et al, 2008).…”

“…Developmental psychologists have recently begun to demonstrate that group norms affect young children's explicit ethnic intergroup attitudes (Apfelbaum, Pauker, Ambady, Sommers, & Norton, 2008;Rutland, 2004;Rutland et al, 2005;Rutland et al, 2007). For example, found that 7-year-old children only showed explicit ethnic prejudice when either a pro-prejudice norm and/or an out-group threat was made salient.…”

Children develop a veil of fairness.

“…Additionally, children in Western society recognize that expressing negative racial attitudes or even acknowledging racial differences can reflect poorly on them and so they learn to inhibit their judgments based on race between the ages of 8 and 10 years old (Apfelbaum et al, 2008;Rutland, Cameron, Milne, & McGeorge, 2005). Taken together, these studies suggest that, around age 8 or 9, children have an understanding of the factors that go into impression formation, modify their own behaviors, and know that others should modify their behaviors in service of appearing favorably to others.…”

“…presentation increasing as they approach eight to ten years of age (Aloise-Young, 1993;Apfelbaum, Pauker, Ambady, Sommers, & Norton, 2008;Banerjee, 2002;Piaget, 1932;Selman, 1980;Turiel, 2006). Interestingly, children become increasingly concerned with how they appear to others at the same time as they are becoming more concerned with being fair.…”

In Blind Pursuit of Racial Equality?

“…1, 2007), and standard school curricula (e.g., activities and readings that convey a generalized cultural identity, but leave group differences unaddressed; Tatum, 2003). Color blindness is also expressed through teachers' strategies for promoting equality in classrooms (e.g., routinely emphasizing that "race does not matter" and "we are all the same"; Pollock, 2004), and even by behavioral changes among students themselves (e.g., a learned tendency to avoid mentioning race, even when clearly useful, beginning around 10 years of age; Apfelbaum, Pauker, Ambady, Sommers, & Norton, 2008).…”