By: Hailey Ripple
Where Does it All Begin?
Research indicates that infants and small children experience prejudice and bias. Russell (2010) discusses how, at the most basic level, all people are born with the tendency to be wary of things considered to be different than them and often group people into categories. A study by Telzer et al.(2013) examined how having no interaction with individuals from an outgroup affected behavioral and neural sensitivity to race. Findings indicated that exclusion from outgroups was associated with increased amygdala responses to outgroup members and later adoption age led to greater racial biases. Vogel, Monesson, and Scott (2012) also found evidence of young children being able to discriminate only between people of their own race. Specifically, findings indicated 5-month old children could differentiate faces of their own race, as well as those of another race while 9-month-old infants only had the ability to differentiate between people of their own race. In conclusion, like Telzer et al., Vogel, Monesson, and Scott (2012) found that as a person develops, they become better at recognizing those they interact with the most and lose the ability to differentiate between those they do not.
While it is clear that during infancy there is a tendency to discriminate between those that are different than you, what about older children? Clark and Clark conducted the earliest study on this population in 1950. In this study, researchers asked African-American children to choose who was “dumb”, “smart”, “most likely to be liked”, etc. from pictures of Caucasian and African-American children. Overall, African-American children associated negative attributes with pictures of the African-American children and positive attributes with Caucasian children. Researchers associated with the show Anderson Cooper 360 (Cooper, 2010) attempted to replicate this study using both African-American and Caucasian children as participants. Findings were relatively consistent with results of the initial study conducted by Clark and Clark (1950). So far, research has indicated that infants through children of approximately 10 years of age have the tendency to discriminate between people of different races. Further, older children have the tendency to have certain ideas about the outgroup as indicated by studies conducted by Clark and Clark and Anderson Cooper 360 researchers.
How Do We Help?
Overall, Russell (2010) provides tips for talking about race with children. For babies, it is important to identify books with pictures of children of multiple races and provide dolls with different skin colors. The skin color of the dolls or people in the book should be described to the child. When the child becomes a toddler, an explanation for why skin color names are assigned to people should be explained in terms they can understand. As for older children, race should be talked about in greater detail and things like discrimination should begin to be discussed. Lastly, parents should talk to their teens when something that is unfair or wrong occurs and identify ways they can help. Telzer et al. (2013) demonstrated that early deprivation of interactions with other races can lead to greater bias. That being said, children should be exposed to individuals of a different race at an early age to attempt to offset the development of racial biases.
Other Research
In terms of adults, there has been research done on brain functioning when processing images of individuals in the outgroup. Schiller, Gianotti, Baumgartner, Nash, Koenig, & Knoch (2016) found that when presented with congruent (like participant) and incongruent (different than participant) pictures in the implicit association test (IAT), participants needed more time to complete two of seven specific parts of the mental processes associated with the task (one at the beginning and the end). Results from a study by Krendl, Kensinger, and Ambady (2012) found when participants were presented with images of stigmatized (homeless person) or non-stigmatized (man holding a gun) individuals and asked to either maintain or control their emotional responses to the pictures, increased activity was observed in the prefrontal cortex when participants were asked to control responses to stigmatized pictures.
So What is the Answer?
Overall, I do think that there is a natural tendency to be biased based on research regarding infants and the way our brains process individuals or situations that we consider to in our outgroup. I believe that it originally begins as an innocent way to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar persons and begin to understand how we relate to the world. At some point this becomes manipulated and altered based on input from behaviors of others and the world around us. However, research also indicates that there could be ways to decrease or prevent prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping to some degree as indicated by Russell (2010) and Telzer (2013).
References
- Clark, K. B. & Clark, M. P. (1950). Emotional factors in racial identification and preference in negro children. Journal of Negro Education, 19(3), 341-350.
- Cooper, A. [Screen Name]. (2010). Kids take on race [black and white]. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/12352000
- Fiske, S. T. (2014). Social Beings: Core Motives in Social Psychology (3rd edition). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
- Krendl, A. C., Kensinger, E. A., & Ambady, N. (2012). How does the brain regulate negative bias to stigma. Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, 7(6), 715-726.
- Russell, K. (2010). Are we born racist? the talk you must have with your children. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.parentmap.com/article/are-we-born-racist-the-talk-you-must-have-with-your-children
- Schiller, B., Gianotti, L. R., Baumgartner, T., Nash, K. Koenig, T., & Knoch, D. (2016). Clocking the social mind by identifying mental processes in the IAT with electrical neuroimaging. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States of America, 113(10), 278-2791.
- Telzer et al. (2013). Early experience shapes amygdala sensitivity to race: an international adoption design. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(33), 13484-13488.
- Vogel, M., Monesson, A., & Scott, L. S. (2012). Building biases in infancy: the influence of race on face and voice emotion matching. Developmental Science, 15(3), 359-372.