Developmental origins of anti-Black bias in White children in the United States: Exposure to and beliefs about racial inequality.

Anti-Black racism remains a pervasive crisis in the United States. Racist social systems reinforce racial inequalities and perpetuate prejudicial beliefs. These beliefs emerge in childhood, are difficult to change once entrenched in adolescence and adulthood, and lead people to support policies that further reinforce racist systems. Therefore, it is important to identify what leads children to form prejudicial beliefs and biases and what steps can be taken to preempt their development. This study examined how children's exposure to and beliefs about racial inequalities predicted anti-Black biases in a sample of 646 White children (4 to 8 years) living across the United States. We found that for children with more exposure to racial inequality in their daily lives, those who believed that racial inequalities were caused by intrinsic differences between people were more likely to hold racial biases, whereas those who recognized the extrinsic factors underlying racial inequalities held more egalitarian attitudes. Grounded in constructivist theories in developmental science, these results are consistent with the possibility that racial biases emerge in part from the explanatory beliefs that children construct to understand the racial inequalities they see in the world around them.

The effect of group status on children's hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs.

Members of advantaged groups are more likely than members of disadvantaged groups to think, feel, and behave in ways that reinforce their group's position within the hierarchy. This study examined how children's status within a group-based hierarchy shapes their beliefs about the hierarchy and the groups that comprise it in ways that reinforce the hierarchy. To do this, we randomly assigned children (4-8 years; N = 123; 75 female, 48 male; 21 Asian, 9 Black, 21 Latino/a, 1 Middle-Eastern/North-African, 14 multiracial, 41 White, 16 not-specified) to novel groups that differed in social status (advantaged, disadvantaged, neutral third-party) and assessed their beliefs about the hierarchy. Across five separate assessments, advantaged-group children were more likely to judge the hierarchy to be fair, generalizable, and wrong to challenge and were more likely to hold biased intergroup attitudes and exclude disadvantaged group members. In addition, with age, children in both the advantaged- and disadvantaged-groups became more likely to see membership in their own group as inherited, while at the same time expecting group-relevant behaviors to be determined more by the environment. With age, children also judged the hierarchy to be more unfair and expected the hierarchy to generalize across contexts. These findings provide novel insights into how children's position within hierarchies can contribute to the formation of hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: A total of 123 4-8-year-olds were assigned to advantaged, disadvantaged, and third-party groups within a hierarchy and were assessed on seven hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs about the hierarchy. Advantaged children were more likely to say the hierarchy was fair, generalizable, and wrong to challenge and to hold intergroup biases favoring advantaged group members. With age, advantaged- and disadvantaged-group children held more essentialist beliefs about membership in their own group, but not the behaviors associated with their group. Results suggest that advantaged group status can shape how children perceive and respond to the hierarchies they are embedded within.

Preschoolers selectively trust and selectively share with others based on their past accuracy and intentions.

This study investigated whether preschool-age children consider both an individual's past accuracy and intentions when deciding whether to trust and share with that individual. The participants, 3- to 5-year-olds (N = 168), played a searching game with partners who varied in both accuracy (accurate or inaccurate) and intentions (prosocial or antisocial). Children received advice from partners about where to look for a hidden object, earning prizes for correct guesses. Then they were given an opportunity to share their prizes with their partner. Results indicated that children trusted sources who provided accurate advice (regardless of intentions) and shared with sources who provided accurate advice or demonstrated prosocial intentions. These findings suggest that children attend to both an individual's accuracy and intentions when deciding how to interact with social partners and may weigh this information differently to make different social decisions.

Beliefs about social norms and racial inequalities predict variation in the early development of racial bias.

Racism remains a pervasive force around the world with widespread and well documented harmful consequences for members of marginalized racial groups. The psychological biases that maintain structural and interpersonal racism begin to emerge in early childhood, but with considerable individual variation-some children develop more racial bias than others. The present study (N = 116; 4-year-old children) provides novel insights into the developmental mechanisms underlying the emergence of racial bias by longitudinally documenting how two psychological processes-normative beliefs about interracial friendships and explanatory beliefs about racial inequalities-developmentally predict the emergence of pro-White/anti-Black racial bias during early childhood. In a 6-month, three-wave, longitudinal study, we found that 4-year-old children's beliefs that their parents and peers do not value interracial friendships predicted increased racial bias in and across time and that children's endorsement of essentialist over extrinsic explanations for racial inequalities predicted the developmental trajectory of racial bias over time. These findings suggest that children's foundational beliefs about the social world developmentally predict the emergence of racial bias in early childhood and speak to the importance of early and persistent intervention efforts targeting children's normative beliefs about interracial friendships and explanatory beliefs about racial inequalities.

Testing the effectiveness of the Developing Inclusive Youth program: A multisite randomized control trial.

The Developing Inclusive Youth program is a classroom-based, individually administered video tool that depicts peer-based social and racial exclusion, combined with teacher-led discussions. A multisite randomized control trial was implemented with 983 participants (502 females; 58.5% White, 41.5% Ethnic/racial minority; Mage  = 9.64 years) in 48 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classrooms across six schools. Children in the program were more likely to view interracial and same-race peer exclusion as wrong, associate positive traits with peers of different racial, ethnic, and gender backgrounds, and report play with peers from diverse backgrounds than were children in the control group. Many approaches are necessary to achieve antiracism in schools. This intervention is one component of this goal for developmental science.

Do Children Distinguish Between Resource Inequalities With Individual Versus Structural Origins?

This study investigated children's ability to distinguish between resource inequalities with individual versus structural origins. Children (3- to 8-years-old; N = 93) were presented with resource inequalities based on either recipients' merit (individual factor) or gender (structural factor). Children were assessed on their expectations for others' allocations, own allocations, reasoning, and evaluations of others' allocations. Children perpetuated merit-based inequalities and either rectified or allocated equally in response to gender-based inequalities. Older, but not younger, children expected others to perpetuate both types of inequalities and differed in their evaluations and reasoning. Links between children's allocations and judgments were also found. Results reveal novel insights into children's developing consideration of the structural and individual factors leading to resource inequalities.

The Role of Competitive and Cooperative Norms in the Development of Deviant Evaluations.

The present study examined how peer group norms influence children's evaluations of deviant ingroup members. Following the manipulation of competitive or cooperative norms, participants (children, Mage  = 8.69; adolescents, Mage  = 13.81; adults, Mage  = 20.89; n = 263) evaluated deviant ingroup members from their own and the group's perspective. Children rated cooperative deviancy positively and believed their group would do the same. Adolescents and adults believed that their group would negatively evaluate cooperative deviancy when their group supported a competitive allocation strategy. Reasoning varied based on norm and participants' agreement with deviancy. Understanding an ingroup may not be favorable toward a cooperative deviant in a competitive context is a developmental challenge requiring the coordination of social and moral norms.

Unintentional and intentional falsehoods: The role of morally relevant theory of mind.

This study investigated how theory of mind (ToM) competence is related to children's ability to differentiate between intentional and unintentional false statements regarding claims to resources. Participants (4-10 years old; N = 122) heard about individuals who had different access to knowledge about resource ownership when making resource claims, and they were asked to make an evaluation, attribute intentions, assign punishment, and predict the teacher's assigned punishment. Two measures of ToM were assessed: a prototypic false belief ToM assessment and a contextually embedded, morally relevant false belief theory of mind (MoToM) assessment. Children's ToM competence reliably predicted more favorable evaluations of the individual who made the unintentional false claim than of the one who did so intentionally. Furthermore, the contextually embedded MoToM assessment predicted children's responses for all of the assessments above and beyond age and prototypic ToM competence. The findings indicate that children's contextually embedded MoToM competence bears on their moral assessments of the intentions of transgressors and underscores the importance of ToM in the ability to discriminate intentional and unintentional false statements.

How social status influences our understanding of others' mental states.

The current study investigated whether children's relative social status within a context influences their ability to identify others' mental states. Across two experiments, 3- to 7-year-olds (N = 103) were randomly assigned to hold either an advantaged or disadvantaged social status and were assessed on their ability to accurately identify others' mental states (via false-belief and belief-emotion "theory of mind" assessments). When participants' status was manipulated by a structural factor (gender; Experiment 1), participants with disadvantaged status were more likely than participants with advantaged status to pass the false-belief and belief-emotion assessments. When status was manipulated by an individual factor (performance; Experiment 2), participants with disadvantaged status were more likely to pass the false-belief assessment but not the belief-emotion assessment. Results provide the first empirical evidence that an individual's contextualized perspective (i.e., his or her social status situated within a given context) influences the individual's ability to identify others' mental states.

Young children's inclusion decisions in moral and social-conventional group norm contexts.

Being a member of a peer group involves making decisions about whom to include in or exclude from the group. Sometimes these decisions are related to whether members of the group support or challenge the norms of the group. To examine how young children weigh concerns for group norms and group membership in both moral and social-conventional norm contexts, children (3- to 6-year-olds; N=73) were asked to decide between including an ingroup member who challenged the group's norm or an outgroup member who supported the norm. Groups held either moral (equal or unequal resource allocation) or social-conventional (traditional or nontraditional) norms. In the moral contexts, children were more likely to include the peer who advocated for the moral concern for equality regardless of the peer's group membership or their group's specific norm. In the social-conventional contexts, however, children were more likely to include the peer who advocated for the conventional concern for maintaining traditions but only at the group-specific level. Furthermore, with age children increasingly based their inclusion decisions on normative concerns, rather than on group membership concerns, and differed in their inclusion decisions for ingroups and outgroups. Finally, children reasoned about their decisions by referencing concerns for fairness, group norms, and group membership, suggesting that preschool children weigh multiple concerns when deciding whom to include in their groups. Overall, the current study revealed differences in how preschool children weigh moral and social-conventional concerns in intergroup contexts.

Children's confession- and lying-related emotion expectancies: Developmental differences and connections to parent-reported confession behavior.

Young children understand that lying is wrong, yet little is known about the emotions children connect to the acts of lying and confessing and how children's emotion expectancies relate to real-world behavior. In the current study, 4- to 9-year-old children (N=48) heard stories about protagonists (a) committing transgressions, (b) failing to disclose their misdeeds, and (c) subsequently lying or confessing. Younger children (4-5years) expected relatively positive feelings to follow self-serving transgressions, failure to disclose, and lying, and they often used gains-oriented and punishment-avoidance reasoning when justifying their responses. Older children (7-9years) had the opposite pattern of emotional responses (better feelings linked to confession compared with lying). Older children expected a more positive parental response to a confession than younger children. Furthermore, children who expected more positive parental responses to confession were reported by parents to confess more in real life than children who expected more negative parental responses to confession. Thus, the current research demonstrates a link between children's emotion expectancies and actual confession behavior.

Theory of Mind and Resource Allocation in the Context of Hidden Inequality.

In many situations, children evaluate straightforward resource inequalities as unfair. It remains unclear, however, how children interpret hidden inequalities (i.e., inequalities that are unknown to allocators and/or recipients). Children 3-9-years-old (N = 87) evaluated and attributed intentions to a naïve resource allocator who, while unaware of a hidden inequality, made three hypothetical resource allocations: 1) an unknowingly equitable allocation (which rectified the inequality), 2) an inequitable allocation (which perpetuated the inequality), and 3) an equal allocation (which maintained the inequality). Children without false belief morally-relevant theory of mind (FB MoToM) attributed more positive intentions to the unknowingly equitable allocation than to the inequitable allocation. Children with FB MoToM, however, did not differ in their attributions of intentions to the unknowingly equitable and inequitable allocations, reflecting their knowledge that the naïve allocator was not aware of the hidden inequality. Further, children's attributions of intentions were related to their evaluations of the allocations. These findings underscore the importance of children's social cognitive inferences to their evaluations of resource allocation decisions.

When and Why Parents Prompt Their Children to Apologize: The Roles of Transgression Type and Parenting Style.

Young children are sensitive to the importance of apologies, yet little is known about when and why parents prompt apologies from children. We examined these issues with parents of 3-10-year-old children (N = 483). Parents judged it to be important for children to apologize following both intentional and accidental morally-relevant transgressions, and they anticipated prompting apologies in both contexts, showing an 'outcome bias' (i.e., a concern for the outcomes of children's transgressions rather than for their underlying intentions). Parents viewed apologies as less important after children's breaches of social convention; parents recognized differences between social domains in their responses to children's transgressions. Irrespective of parenting style, parents were influenced in similar fashion by particular combinations of transgressions and victims, though permissive parents were least likely to anticipate prompting apologies. Parents endorsed different reasons for prompting apologies as a function of transgression type, suggesting that they attend to key features of their children's transgressions when deciding when to prompt apologies.

Challenging gender stereotypes: Theory of mind and peer group dynamics.

To investigate the social cognitive skills related to challenging gender stereotypes, children (N = 61, 3-6 years) evaluated a peer who challenged gender stereotypic norms held by the peer's group. Participants with false belief theory of mind (FB ToM) competence were more likely than participants who did not have FB ToM to expect a peer to challenge the group's stereotypes and propose that the group engage in a non-stereotypic activity. Further, participants with FB ToM rated challenging the peer group more positively. Participants without FB ToM did not differentiate between their own and the group's evaluation of challenges to the group's stereotypic norms, but those with ToM competence asserted that they would be more supportive of challenging the group norm than would the peer group. Results reveal the importance of social-cognitive competencies for recognizing the legitimacy of challenging stereotypes, and for understanding one's own and other group perspectives.

Does racial diversity affect White children's racial bias and reasoning? Depends on where they live and how their social world is structured.

By 4 years of age, White children from across the United States begin to exhibit an awareness of racial inequalities, along with in-group preferences for other White children. The present study explored how the size and racial diversity of White children's social network (e.g., friends, family, and classmates) and neighborhood (zip code) are related to variation in their explanations for racial disparities and anti-Black bias among a sample of 395 White children (ages = 4-11 years old; Mage = 6.6 years) from 263 unique zip codes across the United States. White children in neighborhoods with low diversity were more likely to endorse an extrinsic explanation for racial inequality as their network diversity increased, whereas network diversity did not relate to children's choices for those who lived in neighborhoods with high diversity. These findings held even after controlling for parents' beliefs about diversity, which were themselves positively correlated with children's network and neighborhood diversity. An exploratory analysis revealed that for White children in small networks only, as the number of children of color in their network increased, they were more likely to choose to play with a Black child. Results demonstrate how the diversity of children's social networks and neighborhoods relates to children's developing racial beliefs in contextually dependent ways. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Desire to play with counterstereotypical peers is related to gender stereotypes and playmate experiences.

This study investigated the role of children's gender stereotypes and peer playmate experiences in shaping their desire to play with peers who hold counterstereotypical preferences (e.g., a boy who likes dolls or a girl who likes trucks). Children (N = 95; 46 girls, 49 boys; 67% White, 18% Black, 8% Latinx, 4% Asian, 3% other; median household income = $US97,810) who were 4 to 8 years old (M = 6.11 years old, SD = 1.34) were interviewed about their gender stereotypes about toy preferences, how often they engage in counterstereotypical playmate experiences, and their desire to play with peers who hold counterstereotypical toy preferences. Children with less gender stereotype-consistent expectations reported more playmate experiences with children who played with toys that were gender counterstereotypical compared to children with more gender stereotype-consistent expectations. Additionally, children with less gender stereotype-consistent expectations reported a greater desire to play with peers who held counterstereotypical toy preferences compared to children with more gender stereotype-consistent expectations. Younger children's reported playmate experiences with peers who liked toys that were gender counterstereotypical and their desire to play with these peers were strongly related to their gender stereotypical expectations (and more so than for older children). Together, these findings indicate that children's gender stereotypes and peer playmate experiences are related to their desire to play with peers who hold counterstereotypical toy preferences, highlighting the importance of facilitating diverse friendships for promoting inclusive orientations in childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The psychology of American racism.

American racism is alive and well. In this essay, we amass a large body of classic and contemporary research across multiple areas of psychology (e.g., cognitive, developmental, social), as well as the broader social sciences (e.g., sociology, communication studies, public policy), and humanities (e.g., critical race studies, history, philosophy), to outline seven factors that contribute to American racism: (a) Categories, which organize people into distinct groups by promoting essentialist and normative reasoning; (b) Factions, which trigger ingroup loyalty and intergroup competition and threat; (c) Segregation, which hardens racist perceptions, preferences, and beliefs through the denial of intergroup contact; (d) Hierarchy, which emboldens people to think, feel, and behave in racist ways; (e) Power, which legislates racism on both micro and macro levels; (f) Media, which legitimize overrepresented and idealized representations of White Americans while marginalizing and minimizing people of color; and (g) Passivism, such that overlooking or denying the existence of racism obscures this reality, encouraging others to do the same and allowing racism to fester and persist. We argue that these and other factors support American racism, and we conclude with suggestions for future research, particularly in the domain of identifying ways to promote antiracism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Children's evaluations of individually and structurally based inequalities: The role of status.

Social inequalities limit important opportunities and resources for members of marginalized and disadvantaged groups. Understanding the origins of how children construct their understanding of social inequalities in the context of their everyday peer interactions has the potential to yield novel insights into when-and how-individuals respond to different types of social inequalities. The present study examined whether children (N = 176; 3- to 8-years-old; 52% female, 48% male; 70% European American, 16% African American, 10% Latinx, and 4% Asian American; middle-income backgrounds) differentiate between structurally based inequalities (e.g., based on gender) and individually based inequalities (e.g., based on merit). Children were randomly assigned to a group that received more (advantaged) or fewer (disadvantaged) resources than another group due to either their groups' meritorious performance on a task or the gender biases of the peer in charge of allocating resources. Overall, children evaluated structurally based inequalities to be more unfair and worthy of rectification than individually based inequalities, and disadvantaged children were more likely to view inequalities to be wrong and act to rectify them compared to advantaged children. With age, advantaged children became more likely to rectify the inequalities and judge perpetuating allocations to be unfair. Yet, the majority of children allocated equally in response to both types of inequality. The findings generated novel evidence regarding how children evaluate and respond to individually and structurally based inequalities, and how children's own status within the inequality informs these responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A Developmental Science Perspective on Social Inequality.

Many people believe in equality of opportunity, but overlook and minimize the structural factors that shape social inequalities in the United States and around the world, such as systematic exclusion (e.g., educational, occupational) based on group membership (e.g., gender, race, socioeconomic status). As a result, social inequalities persist, and place marginalized social groups at elevated risk for negative emotional, learning, and health outcomes. Where do the beliefs and behaviors that underlie social inequalities originate? Recent evidence from developmental science indicates that an awareness of social inequalities begins in childhood, and that children seek to explain the underlying causes of the disparities that they observe and experience. Moreover, children and adolescents show early capacities for understanding and rectifying inequalities when regulating access to resources in peer contexts. Drawing on a social reasoning developmental framework, this paper synthesizes what is currently known about children's and adolescents' awareness, beliefs, and behavior concerning social inequalities, and highlights promising avenues by which developmental science can help reduce harmful assumptions and foster a more just society.