Multiracial Children’s and Adults’ Categorizations of Multiracial Individuals

Abstract

Research has explored how multiracial individuals are categorized by monoracial individuals, but has not yet explored how they are categorized by multiracial individuals themselves. We examined how multiracial children (4-9 years) and adults categorized multiracial targets (presented with and without parentage information). When parentage information was provided, multiracial targets were more likely to be categorized as neither wholly black nor wholly white. However, both multiracial adults and children more often categorized multiracial targets as black than as white regardless of the absence or presence of parentage information. For multiracial children, increased contact with white people predicted the tendency to categorize multiracial targets as black. These data suggest that multiracial children's categorizations are more flexible than those of monoracial children in previous research, and that the tendency to categorize multiracial targets as black emerges early in development within multiracial samples, and is especially likely in predominantly white contexts.

Does this Smile Make me Look White? Exploring the Effects of Emotional Expressions on the Categorization of Multiracial Children

“…Moreover, Black children were categorized as most Black, followed by Multiracial children, then White children, suggesting that Multiracial children were seen as not exclusively White or exclusively Black, but somewhere in between and with a tendency toward Black. These data are consistent with past research showing a Black-categorization bias when categorizing Multiracial adults (Ho et al, 2011;Peery & Bodenhausen, 2008) and children (Hirschfeld, 1995;, 2017, and therefore demonstrate further a consistent and highly replicable pattern of Multiracial individuals being categorized by others as members of their minority groups. We also found that categorization judgments were influenced by both participant race and children's emotional expressions.…”

“…In conclusion, Multiracial children (ages 4 to 6), like Multiracial adults in previous research, were perceived as more Black than White (see also , 2017. Yet, Multiracial children, unlike Multiracial adults in previous research, were not categorized differently as a function of their emotional expressions, which could have stemmed from children being perceived as less threatening than adults (Goff et al, 2014), thereby reducing an angry = Black or an angry = outgroup bias.…”

“…In an effort to move toward a fuller understanding of Multiracial person perception, we examined the categorizations of Multiracial children (ages 4 to 6) with angry, neutral, and happy facial expressions, with both White participants and Black participants. First, we tested whether or not both participant groups showed an overall Black-categorization bias, which would replicate a well-established body of research (Ho et al, 2015;Ho et al, 2011;Krosch & Amodio, 2014;Peery & Bodenhausen, 2008;, 2017). Second, we tested the extent to which the emotional expressions of the Multiracial children influenced how they were categorized.…”

An integrative review of impression formation processes for multiracial individuals

“…Americans continue to apply hypodescent to Black‐White people today (Chen, Couto, Sacco, & Dunham, , Experiment 1; Ho, Kteily, & Chen, ; Ho, Sidanius, Cuddy, & Banaji, ; Ho, Sidanius, Levin, & Banaji, ; Noyes & Keil, , Experiment 4; Peery & Bodenhausen, , Experiment 1; Roberts & Gelman, , ). There are dispositional and situational factors that impact the likelihood that perceivers do so.…”

Now you see race, now you don’t: Verbal cues influence children’s racial stability judgments

“…U.S. childrenare more likely than Israeli children to develop the concept that race is objective, thus indicating cross-cultural variation in racial essentialism (Diesendruck, Goldfein-Elbaz, Rhodes, Gelman, & Neumark, 2013). Moreover, the extent to which children categorize Multiracial children into different "kinds" of people varies as a function of their age, race, and experiences with inter-group contact (Roberts & Gelman, 2015;Roberts & Gelman, 2016a).…”