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The Nature and Consequences of Essentialist Beliefs About Race in Early Childhood
Author(s) -
Mandalaywala Tara M.,
RangerMurdock Gabrielle,
Amodio David M.,
Rhodes Marjorie
Publication year - 2018
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.13008
Subject(s) - essentialism , race (biology) , psychology , variation (astronomy) , developmental psychology , diversity (politics) , social psychology , sociology , gender studies , physics , astrophysics , anthropology
It is widely believed that race divides the world into biologically distinct kinds of people—an essentialist belief inconsistent with reality. Essentialist views of race have been described as early emerging, but this study found that young children ( n = 203, M age = 5.45) hold only the more limited belief that the physical feature of skin color is inherited and stable. Overall, children rejected the causal essentialist view that behavioral and psychological characteristics are constrained by an inherited racial essence. Although average levels of children's causal essentialist beliefs about race were low, variation in these beliefs was related to children's own group membership, exposure to diversity, as well as children's own social attitudes.