Premium
Monoracial and Biracial Children: Effects of Racial Identity Saliency on Social Learning and Social Preferences
Author(s) -
Gaither Sarah E.,
Chen Eva E.,
Corriveau Kathleen H.,
Harris Paul L.,
Ambady Nalini,
Sommers Samuel R.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.12266
Subject(s) - psychology , white (mutation) , identity (music) , developmental psychology , social identity theory , flexibility (engineering) , social psychology , race (biology) , task (project management) , social group , gender studies , physics , economics , biochemistry , chemistry , statistics , mathematics , management , sociology , gene , acoustics
Children prefer learning from, and affiliating with, their racial in‐group but those preferences may vary for biracial children. Monoracial (White, Black, Asian) and biracial (Black/White, Asian/White) children ( N = 246, 3–8 years) had their racial identity primed. In a learning preferences task, participants determined the function of a novel object after watching adults (White, Black, and Asian) demonstrate its uses. In the social preferences task, participants saw pairs of children (White, Black, and Asian) and chose with whom they most wanted to socially affiliate. Biracial children showed flexibility in racial identification during learning and social tasks. However, minority‐primed biracial children were not more likely than monoracial minorities to socially affiliate with primed racial in‐group members, indicating their in‐group preferences are contextually based.