Young children's racial awareness and affect and their perceptions about mothers’ racial affect in a multiracial context

Abstract

There is a substantial literature documenting pre-schoolers' racial awareness and affect from multiracial societies in North America and a fast-growing body of work from societies that are or were once more racially homogeneous. However, studies in Britain, a racially diverse society, on this developmental period have been curiously rare. This study examined racial awareness and affect of 125 White, Black, and Asian 3--to 5-year-olds in London. Children were tested on cognitive level, person description and classification, race labelling and matching, self-categorization and asked about their racial preference and rejection and inferences about their mothers' preference and rejection. Children were least likely to use race versus other categorical cues to spontaneously describe or classify others, even though the majority correctly sorted others by race labels, matched them to drawings, and categorized themselves by race. With age and increasing cognitive level, children described and categorized others by race more and improved in race matching. White children from age 4 preferred White peers and inferred that their mothers would prefer White children at age 5. Children's own preference and inference about mothers are related. Children did not show race-based rejection, but boys inferred that their mothers would prefer White children and reject Black children. The findings are discussed in relation to racial salience between contexts, previous research, and theories.

Ethnic Cognition and Affect of British-Born Chinese Children

“…The latter pattern is in line with the existing research findings of other British children (e.g., Lam et al, 2011) and those of children from most other countries (Aboud, 1988;Katz & Kofkin, 1997). This finding also supports the idea that, provided that other categorical and non-categorical attributes are available, ethnicity does not offer the most salient characteristics for person perception (cf., Bennett et al, 1991;Ramsey & Myers, 1990).…”

“…This is in line with previous findings from White (Aboud, 1988) and British Chinese children (Dai et al, 2014) and corresponds with the general premise of SIT. In addition, children's inferences about their mothers' affect resembled their own, again in line with existing findings (Castelli et al, 2007;Lam et al, 2011). Similar to ethnic cognition above, although there was greater ingroup preference from 7-8 years, there were no significant differences between age groups.…”

“…She explained that they would play some "games" with photographs, drawings or word cards. The materials and tasks were adapted from previous studies with children of a similar or slightly younger age range Lam et al, 2011). The social stimuli's (targets) ethnic groups were selected based on their numerical representations in the sample's neighbourhood (apart from the noticeable minority of Chinese residents, Black and White people formed the majority, 75%).…”

“…Relatively little systematic quantitative research has investigated British children's ethnic cognition, however, with notable exceptions (Dai, McGregor, & Williams, 2014;Davey, 1983;Lam, Guerrero, Damree, & Enesco, 2011;Leman & Lam, 2008;Milner, 1983;Norburn, 1983;Rutland, Cameron, Bennett, & Ferrell, 2005).…”

“…Ingroup bias should also increase with age, although the levels may "plateau", or even decline, towards later childhood, going by the premises of SCT concerning cognitive maturation of children at that stage, which purportedly moderates ingroup/outgroup perception. The children were also asked to infer their mothers' ethnic affect as a "significant other" (with an influence on children's own attitudes), where previous research has documented moderate associations between children's and perceived parental ethnic attitudes (Castelli, Carraro, Tomelleri, & Amari, 2007;Lam et al, 2011). It is likely that British-born Chinese children's ethnic affect would therefore resemble their mothers' inferred affect.…”