Developing Children’s Racial Preferences Across Contexts: The Influence of Ingroup Familiarity and Hierarchical Status

Abstract

Children make judgments of preferences in their daily lives which may have long term implications on their perception. Specifically, racial preferences in children are not evident from birth but appear to develop slightly later in a child’s development. These racial preferences can manifest into learned racial discrimination and bias in adults as they grow older, which is why understanding their development is critical. As noted, children do develop these racial preferences as they grow older, but how do they arise? What influences a child to prefer one race over another? There are two different viewpoints on the matter: one being children use their understanding of ingroup racial preferences and one being children use their understanding of racial hierarchies. Both sides of the debate of children’s racial preferences have substantial evidence, both in North America and various other parts of the globe. Thus, children’s racial preferences arise out of more of a hybrid combination of both ingroup and hierarchical racial preference. Consequently, children may use their understanding of racial status when assessing racial preferences. Knowing these insights, research in this field can move to assess how different contexts are influenced by this learned hybrid racial preference model. Specifically, evaluating a under researched cultural context with a history of discrimination may provide more insight into this debate of how learned cultural racial bias and ingroup may influence how children exhibit these racial preferences.