Children infer ingroup preferences merely from observed social regularities without explicit teaching

Evidence

An important question is how children learn bias in the first place, even under circumstances in which their parents do not express overt prejudice. It is not enough to show that paired associate learning can occur in 10- year-olds, because prejudice may first be learned differently (e.g., emotionally, making it harder to eliminate) than the way it can be learned later. Other forms of observational learning may be more common if, for example, children notice that people of the same racial/ethnic group congregate in families and friendship groups. Thus, illusory correlations ( Johnston & Jacobs, 2003) and actual regularities will be quickly observed by preschoolers, who are noted for their eagerness to acquire language and social rules. Children may assume that because their family has fewer associations with outgroup members, the latter are to be avoided and disliked. Such a minimal learning environment may be a sufficient explanation for young children who give meaning to social regularities, yet it may not explain later learning. Learning processes may be moderated by developmental and identity characteristics of the child learner. Because children have a different understanding and evaluation of self and social information at 5 years compared to 9 years, they will pick out different messages to adopt. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2016 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Bigler and colleagues (Bigler, Brown, & Markell, 2001; Brown & Bigler, 2002) arranged for children to wear either blue or yellow t-shirts at school for several weeks, thus manipulating social categories and identity. Only when teachers used t-shirt color to organize class activities did children use these categories for a more positive, but not less negative, ingroup evaluation. Social status was manipulated in a naturalistic way with posters distinguishing highand low-status personnel according to t-shirt color; highbut not low-status children made differential group evaluations. In contrast, when numerical status was manipulated, those who were significantly outnumbered by their classmates used the categories regardless of the teacher’s use of them. This research comes closest to testing variables from three boxes in our integrated framework, namely the child (ages/stages and identity/status) and peer intergroup contact. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2022 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Children’s apprenticeship-of-observation transmits teacher bias along with pedagogy; Children infer prejudice from observed social regularities even without overt parental bias — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2016; Children infer outgroup avoidance from mere observed segregation patterns (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Children can acquire prejudice through minimal observation of social regularities without parental modeling #corroborates (0.95) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2016
• Children only form ingroup bias from categories when adults make them functional #complicates (0.78) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2022