Overhearing Brief Negative Messages Has Lasting Effects on Children’s Attitudes Toward Novel Social Groups
Societies are rife with out‐group discrimination and mistreatment. One way that children might acquire social biases that lead to such outcomes is by overhearing derogatory or disparaging comments about social groups. Children (n = 121) overheard a video call between a researcher and an adult or chi...
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| Published in | Child development Vol. 92; no. 4; pp. e674 - e690 |
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| Main Authors | , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
United States
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
01.07.2021
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| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Societies are rife with out‐group discrimination and mistreatment. One way that children might acquire social biases that lead to such outcomes is by overhearing derogatory or disparaging comments about social groups. Children (n = 121) overheard a video call between a researcher and an adult or child caller who made negative claims (or no claims) about a novel social group. Immediately and following a 2‐week delay, older children (7–9 years) who overheard the message demonstrated stronger negative attitudes toward the group than children who heard no message. Younger children’s (4‐ to 5‐year‐olds’) attitudes were generally unaffected by these claims. Thus, overhearing brief, indirect messages from children or adults had robust and lasting effects on the social biases of children 7 years and older. |
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| Bibliography: | The reported recruitment methods, consenting procedures, and study protocol were approved by Vanderbilt University’s Institutional Review Board (“Learning about Social Groups”, IRB# 170345). This work could not have been accomplished without the help of many others. We thank Steven Roberts and Josh Rottman for their thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript. We also thank the three anonymous reviewers for their feedback on the submitted manuscript. This research was conducted with the help of a team of hard‐working research assistants and staff, especially Taylor Boothby, Marlotte de Jong, Carrie Sherry, Janelle Brown, Charlotte Buck, Rachel Calvosa, Leoncia Gillespie, Nicolette Granata, Mackenzie Jackson, Noora Jamal, Shreya Karak, Mary Tezak, Megan Wiebe, Alexandra Wolfe, and Anna Yarinsky. We are also grateful to the actresses who were willing to be a part of our study stimuli, Zoey Saylor, Mira D’Agostino, Allison Vreland, and Susannah Sutherland. We thank the parents who volunteered their time to bring their children into our laboratory to participate in this study and the schools that allowed us to recruit children from their classrooms, Saint Ann School, Saint Bernard Academy, Explore Community School, and the Eighteenth Avenue Family Enrichment Center. ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 0009-3920 1467-8624 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/cdev.13547 |