Children only form ingroup bias from categories when adults make them functional

Evidence

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

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Direct empirical grounding for the reader’s contact-theory reassessment: shows category salience and status, not mere exposure, determine when children develop ingroup bias.
• XREF: Extends the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes tradition and Allport’s own conditions for intergroup contact having effects on prejudice.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2022