Meltzoff & Gilliam (2024), “Young children and implicit racial biases” Flashcards
What is the most well-known and societally impactful study showing the young age by which children display racial biases?
“doll study” was influential in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that school segregation was unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.
How do children display racial biases in
judging the amount of pain experienced by others?
children were then presented with pictures of children matched to their own gender and similar in age, one being a Black child
and the other a white child, and they were instructed to rate the pain these children might feel if the same thing happened to them.
By seven years of age, children were demonstrating a weak racial bias that the Black child would feel less pain, and by ten years old, the bias was strong and reliable
How do children “catch” racial biases?
children’s ability for observational social learning and imitation
- they learn mannerisms, skills, social practices, and values simply by observing the nonverbal behavioral patterns of other people.
How did a study show imitation with children?
Show children an object and how to use it (they’ve never seen this object before)
then send them home
delay of either one day, one week, or one month brought them back
Gave them object
Remarkably, the infants imitated the actions they had seen, even those retested after a one-month delay and in a different room than the original one.
Explain a study on this:
“Infants learn not only from what other people do, but also from what they intended to do.”
infants watched as an adult tried to pull apart a dumbbell shaped object, but the adult’s hands “accidentally” slipped off the ends so it did not come apart
When the infants were presented with the objects, they did not duplicate what the adult actually did (hands slipping off ), but instead reenacted the unspoken goal of the adult’s actions
Explain the four- to five-year-old preschooler study on young children exhibiting biases based on race, gender, language, and other attributes?
One study presented four- to five-year-old preschoolers with video clips of adult biased behaviors. The videos showed interactions between one adult (the “actor”) and two other adults (the “targets”).
While distributing the toy, the actor exuded
positive nonverbal signals toward one of
the targets (smiling, leaning in, using a warm tone of voice) and
negative nonverbal signals toward the other target (scowling, leaning away)
FOUND: preschoolers treated the targets differentially
How might adult social interactions provide opportunities for young children to observe and learn implicit racial biases?
early care and education programs, young children see and experience a myriad of adult social interactions, including how adult caregivers interact with other young children in the classroom and other adult caregivers
What did they find with preschool expulsion rates?
Black preschoolers were more than twice as likely to be expelled as white preschoolers
boys were more than four times as likely to be expelled as girls
(no evidence they misbehaved more then others)
early expulsions and suspensions predict a host of negative life outcomes, likely because of a resulting damaged relationship to schools/ teachers and a concomitant denial of educational opportunities
Explain this study:
high-tech eye-tracking device was employed to assess whether preschool teachers might assume and anticipate a greater likelihood of disruptive behaviors from Black preschoolers
Shown video of a Black boy, a Black girl, a white boy, and a white girl.
The participants were instructed to watch the videos, look for evidence of
“challenging behaviors,” (and press button when they saw that behaviour)
At the end of the videos, the teachers were shown a picture of each of the four
preschoolers, as displayed on the right side of Figure 1, and were asked which one
of the preschoolers they felt required the most of their attention
(note: No challenging behaviour actually in the video)
early educators, when expecting challenging behaviors, spent significantly more time focusing their gaze on the Black preschoolers, especially the Black boy.
However, when teachers were asked explicitly which child they believed
required the most of their attention, results indicated that teachers believed they
were most closely watching for misbehavior based on gender
how do the other preschoolers in the classroom experience this extra vigilance placed on the Black boys in the classroom?
young children are astute observers of adult behavior, and even subtle displays of negative affect and attention by adults are noted by young children who then shape their own biases based on this observational social learning
How does the diversity of staff implicate bias towards children?
white early care and education staff are more likely to engage in higher-paid/higher-status tasks,
while nonwhite staff are performing lower-status tasks under the lead teachers’ supervision, communicating ideas about who has power and authority–and children watch this daily
What do they conclude? (summary)
young children are social pattern detectors. They study our behavior, and sometimes the nonverbal messages they receive are not the ones we intend to send. What every parent, teacher, and societal leader should think about is that children watch and learn from our behavior before first grade
(they adopt, practice, and perpetuate our biases)
