Racial Categorization Predicts Implicit Racial Bias in Preschool Children

Abstract

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.

Gene-environment interactions in other-race face recognition: Early caregiving experience and oxytocin receptor genotype interact to increase speed of other-race categorization

“…The findings of the present study indicate the role of early caregiving experience on other-race face recognition. Given that early caregiving experience appears to improve other-race face recognition, it supports previous findings that training has been shown to significantly improve other-race face recognition 6 and that training children can reduce implicit racial bias 12 .…”

“…A robust finding that has been consistently demonstrated is an other-race recognition deficit, which has been termed as the other-race effect (ORE) 4 , which is a tendency for recognition accuracy to be higher for same-race faces than for cross-race faces. The ORE has real-world repercussions such as difficulties in social interaction, inaccurate eyewitness testimony 5 and implicit racism 6,7 . Two theoretical models have been proposed to explain the ORE; perceptual expertise models and social categorization models.…”

Face Processing in Infancy and Beyond: The Case of Social Categories

“…More importantly for us, such training has been shown to be effective in children as young preschoolers (Xiao et al, 2015), and mere exposure to such faces without the individuation aspect of the training was not effective (Qian et al, 2017b). The individuation training disrupts the tendency to respond to other-race FACE PROCESSING IN INFANCY 31 faces categorically, a mode of responding that is positively related to implicit bias (Setoh et al, 2017).…”

Bias at the intersection of race and gender: Evidence from preschool‐aged children

“…By the preschool years, children demonstrate more than perceptual tuning: they use social categories—including those based on race, gender, and even arbitrary features (e.g., “minimal groups”)—as an inductive base to guide their judgments and expectations about individuals they have never encountered (Diesendruck & Eldror, ; Dunham, Baron, & Carey, ). They also harbour implicit and explicit preferences for members of their own racial group (Bian, Leslie, & Cimpian, ; Cvencek, Greenwald, & Meltzoff, ; Dunham, Chen, & Banaji, ; Qian et al, ; Qian, Quinn, Heyman, Pascalis, & Lee ; Setoh et al, ; Xiao et al, ).…”