Neuroscience
Young children sometimes give the impression of being racially prejudiced - for example, by preferring to play with other children who have the same colour skin as them. To find out where these attitudes come from, Luigi Castelli and colleagues at the University of Padova in Italy, looked to parents and found that it is mothers' perceived attitudes which are more influential than fathers'.
The researchers tested the attitudes of 58 white children aged between four and seven years. Presented with a drawing of a white child and a black child, 86 per cent of the children said they would prefer to play with the white child. They were also more likely to allocate a choice of positive attributes to the white child than to the black child, while showing the opposite pattern when allocating a list of negative attributes.
So where does this bias come from? Rather than asking the parents about their attitudes, as past research has done, this study looked at the children's perception of their parents' attitudes. This approach has the benefit of avoiding parents' tendency to give socially appropriate answers.
Around 80 per cent of the children said they thought their parents would prefer them to play with the white child, giving similar percentages for their mothers and fathers. Similarly, around three quarters of the children said they thought their mother and father would prefer to meet a white adult rather than a black adult, and that their parents would allocate more positive traits to a white adult than to a black adult.
Next, the researchers carried out some statistics (a linear regression) to see whether it was the children's perception of their mothers' or their fathers' attitudes that best predicted the children's own attitudes. Crucially, the mothers' perceived attitudes predicted both the children's choice of playmate and their allocation of attributes, whereas the fathers' perceived attitudes predicted neither.
"In sum, mothers seem to play a more relevant role in comparison with fathers in shaping children's responses towards Blacks," the researchers concluded.
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Castelli, L., Carraro, L., Tomelleri, S. & Amari, A. (2007). White children's alignment to the perceived racial attitudes of the parents: Closer to the mother than father. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 25, 353-357.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Do children acquire racism from their mothers?
Young children sometimes give the impression of being racially prejudiced - for example, by preferring to play with other children who have the same colour skin as them. To find out where these attitudes come from, Luigi Castelli and colleagues at the University of Padova in Italy, looked to parents and found that it is mothers' perceived attitudes which are more influential than fathers'.The researchers tested the attitudes of 58 white children aged between four and seven years. Presented with a drawing of a white child and a black child, 86 per cent of the children said they would prefer to play with the white child. They were also more likely to allocate a choice of positive attributes to the white child than to the black child, while showing the opposite pattern when allocating a list of negative attributes.
So where does this bias come from? Rather than asking the parents about their attitudes, as past research has done, this study looked at the children's perception of their parents' attitudes. This approach has the benefit of avoiding parents' tendency to give socially appropriate answers.
Around 80 per cent of the children said they thought their parents would prefer them to play with the white child, giving similar percentages for their mothers and fathers. Similarly, around three quarters of the children said they thought their mother and father would prefer to meet a white adult rather than a black adult, and that their parents would allocate more positive traits to a white adult than to a black adult.
Next, the researchers carried out some statistics (a linear regression) to see whether it was the children's perception of their mothers' or their fathers' attitudes that best predicted the children's own attitudes. Crucially, the mothers' perceived attitudes predicted both the children's choice of playmate and their allocation of attributes, whereas the fathers' perceived attitudes predicted neither.
"In sum, mothers seem to play a more relevant role in comparison with fathers in shaping children's responses towards Blacks," the researchers concluded.
_________________________________
Castelli, L., Carraro, L., Tomelleri, S. & Amari, A. (2007). White children's alignment to the perceived racial attitudes of the parents: Closer to the mother than father. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 25, 353-357.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Does The Way Mothers Think About Their Difficult Children Matter?
Early findings have shown that the mothers of badly behaved young children think about their child’s behaviour in a characteristic way, tending to believe that their bad behaviour is intentional and has to do with the nature of the child rather than...
- Dissecting Good Parenting
How affectionate parents are towards their children, and how they respond to their children’s distress are two distinct aspects of good parenting that each have a unique effect on a child’s development, psychologists at the University of Toronto...
- Do Mums Know About Child Development?
An American study has tested how much mothers know about child development, safety issues in raising children, infant sleeping habits and nutrition. Two hundred and three women at a paediatric clinic and an obstetric clinic in a southern state in America...
- Interested In Gaining Research Experience? Apply For A Bilingual Ra Position With The Family Involvement Lab!
The Family Involvement Laboratory IS LOOKING FOR BILINGUAL (Spanish/English) UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTS for the spring (3 Credits). Students will serve as research assistants for the Family Involvement Lab, which is currently conducting a study...
- Bilingual Research Assistant Positions With The Family Involvement Lab!
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