olescents prepare to date (Schofield, 1982). Social factors related to peer approval need to be examined more closely to determine how they contribute to self-segregation in group settings, and extend to dyadic friend relations. Because of the obvious benefits to social and work relations, research is currently focusing on conditions that improve the number, stability, and quality of cross-race friendships, with a view to reducing the self- segregation that takes place in group and dyadic settings.
more than peers or television characters. However, in this study, emotions were more commonly imitated in the second year of life and their frequency declined with age. Fur- thermore, with age these imitated emotions took on a more contrived quality, dissociated from the child’s internal state. By 3 years of age, the emotions of peers, and the task- oriented behaviors of parents were more likely to be imitated. Because children do not imitate most of the words, emotions, and behaviors they observe in their parents, we are forced to ask, why ethnic attitudes? The need for parental approval may underlie chil- dren’s eagerness to learn task behaviors, but not their acquisition of language, gender pref- erences, or social categorization (Lytton & Romney, 1991). Ethnic categories may be constructed by children in the preschool years, because they are motivated to organize their social world and so use whatever information allows them to create simple rules.
Children in the middle childhood years, who are capable of forming more complex cat- egories, would be expected to seek and use information to elaborate and differentiate their categories.
The simplest way to demonstrate parental influence on the acquisition of prejudice is to correlate the attitudes of parents and children. Some studies have found a small cor- relation (Carlson & Iovini, 1985; Mosher & Scodel, 1960). Others found no significant relationship between White parents and their children (Aboud & Doyle, 1996b; Davey, 1983) or Black parents and their children (Branch & Newcombe, 1986). Children of 10 years could not accurately predict the attitudes of their parents or best friends, but their own attitudes correlated significantly with what they thought were others’ attitudes (Aboud & Doyle, 1996b; Epstein & Komorita, 1966). Children generally seem to per- ceive in others levels of prejudice comparable to their own, either because they egocen- trically distort others’ attitudes or because they have little real evidence on which to base judgments to the contrary.
Most children receive very little information about race or ethnicity from their parents.
Kofkin, Katz, and Downey (1995) reported that only 26% of White parents of 3-year- old children had ever commented on race, usually for the purpose of teaching their chil- dren about equality and appreciating differences, or merely to answer their children’s questions. The correlation between parent and child attitudes was .33 in families where race had been discussed, and nonsignificant in families where race had not been discussed.
This suggests that children are influenced by their parents’ attitudes only when parents explicitly talk about their views. Typically it is in regions where ethnic conflict is high that parents explicitly and emotionally express their attitudes (e.g., Bar-Tal, 1996;
Duckitt, 1988), leading to the one-sided conclusion that high prejudice in children comes from parents. However, parents are just as likely to be responsible for lowering the levels of prejudice in their children.
Socio-cultural influences. Minority group children may be more exposed to parental talk and teaching about their own cultural background and social discrimination. A number of recent studies have examined how Black and Mexican-American parents influence their children. For example, in the Kofkin et al. (1995) study, Black parents were much more likely than White parents to discuss race with their 3-year-olds (54%), reportedly to protect their children from, or prepare them for, experiences of discrimination. However, there was no relation between Black parents’ talk of race and their child’s attitudes (see also Branch & Newcombe, 1986). This changes with age, because as children mature
their parents may discuss race in terms of civil rights (Spencer & Markstrom-Adams, 1990), conveying pride and assertiveness rather than protection. Exposure to sophisti- cated talk about race may explain differences in ingroup preferences among Black and Mexican-American children older than 7 years who identify with their group (Knight, Bernal, Garza, Cota, & Ocampo, 1993). In contrast with gender socialization, which appears to decline with age during childhood, minority ethnic socialization may increase as parents detect their children’s receptivity to the more complex aspects of ethnic group membership. Likewise, it is thought that minority children derive important ideas about minority group identity from watching television programs, which to date have not pro- vided the kinds of models that parents find desirable (Graves, 1993).
Finally, there is ample evidence that historical and cultural differences exist in preju- dice, not only in the targets of prejudice but in the prevalence of prejudice. These can only be explained in terms of society- or culture-wide influences on children. In the past, it was common for children to overhear racial slurs and racial jokes in adult company.
This would provide them with labels and attributes, made memorable by the emotions expressed in the context, and it would also signal that such opinions gained approval from others. Currently, immigration patterns (e.g., Black-Gutman & Hickson, 1996), violent conflicts (Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998), and affirmative action programs (Pratkanis &
Turner, 1996) may be discussed fearfully and angrily by parents, allowing children to learn labels and their associated emotions. With greater understanding of the threaten- ing aspects of ethnic conflict, adolescents in some cultures show a return to high levels of prejudice (Black-Gutman & Hickson, 1996) while others follow a linear decline (Bar- Tal, 1996).
In some cultures and for some children, the labels and perceptual cues are complex and subtle. Australian children, for example, do not easily create consistent categories and evaluations for people from Southeast Asia (e.g., Robinson, 1998). Likewise, minority children in heterogeneous societies may be exposed to variable and inconsistent infor- mation about race because they have models and peers from different races. They may identify with different people regardless of race and so create categories that are not dichotomous or race-based.
Experimental intervention studies. The lack of a consistent relation between the attitudes of children and their parents or peers may result from the lack of direct expression of atti- tudes. Conditions could be created to study social influence by asking parent and child, or two children, to discuss their attitudes. Aboud and Doyle (1996a) paired high- prejudice children with a low-prejudice friend to talk about their racial evaluations. Both made comments in line with their initial levels of prejudice; but when tested afterwards, only high-prejudice children were influenced to adopt more tolerant attitudes, in direct relation to the comments made by their friend. Unbiased children, in contrast, did not adopt their friend’s prejudiced attitudes. The inference is that when talk about race is directed to the specific concerns and justifications of the high-prejudice child, it will have a beneficial influence. The results of this and other studies on coordinated discussions between children suggest that social influence takes place not solely because of imitation, dominance, conformity, need for approval, or compromise on some middle ground.
Rather the process is one of gradually constructing a perspective of reality by repeating each other’s phrases and evaluating them. It appears that children must be somewhat
active in the process, because when they passively listen to vignettes that are inconsistent with their race or gender stereotypes and evaluations, the information is disregarded or distorted (e.g., Bigler & Liben, 1993). Respect for the person who provides an opposing view and personal engagement, rather than simply counter-stereotype information, may be necessary to change children’s attitudes (Madge, 1976; Moe, Nacoste, & Insko, 1981).
Research has also examined how children learn social categories from contextual cues and whether they automatically translate category differences into evaluations. In a class- room experiment of category formation, Bigler, Jones, and Lobliner (1999, in press) had children wear yellow or blue T-shirts. Only when teachers imposed extra meaning on the T-shirts, by using their colors to organize children and their activities, did children use the categories to make evaluations. Specifically, they applied positive evaluations to more students of their color group and negative evaluations to fewer of their group than did control children whose teachers did not make use of color groupings. The conclusion here is that simple exposure to groupings and belonging to one of them does not promote categorical evaluation unless an adult makes use of the categories. This conclusion appears inconsistent with results from the minimal group paradigm used by Tajfel and colleagues (1978; Turner, 1982), where simply assigning a person to a category resulted in their allo- cating rewards to maximize the superiority of the ingroup. There are at least two reasons why minimal group findings are not always consistent with real-group findings. One is that allocating rewards, especially between only two groups, arouses a competitive spirit and a desire to demonstrate that “we” are the best (Harstone & Augoustinos, 1995). A second is that because the social categories existed in a vacuum, norms about fairness and information about individuals were absent. Results tend to be more extreme in analogue studies, where complex information is unavailable, than in natural settings (Aboud, 1992;
Jetten, 1997; Kawakami & Dion, 1993, 1995).
Integrated schooling and cooperative learning groups are types of intervention, though less controlled than the previously described ones (see Schofield & Eurich-Fulcer, this volume, chapter 23). Though increased contact of this nature has not significantly altered students’ attitudes toward ethnic outgroups as a whole (e.g., Weigel, Wiser, & Cook, 1975), work and social relations appear to benefit from such school programs.
In summary, while children do learn through imitation and approval to acquire the categories and evaluations of significant others, the process depends on many conditions.
It takes place more frequently when children are young, and when parents or teachers explicitly express their emotions and values. Older children have access to a variety of inputs from their school and peers and are better able to integrate information into a dif- ferentiated stereotype of others. They are also cognitively equipped to evaluate both tol- erant and biased perspectives and may be more influenced by tolerant attitudes or by attitudes that are consistent with their self-identity. Changes taking place within the child, due to cognitive development, determine which social inputs will be influential.
Cognitive developmental theory
Piaget’s theory proposed that children develop preferences for groups with which they identify (Piaget & Weil, 1951). According to Piaget, preoperational children are egocen-
tric and unaware of national or ethnic groups, basing their preferences on individual characteristics of stimulus persons. When children enter the concrete operational stage at 7 years, they begin to categorize people into ethnic groups and to exaggerate differences;
they then map contrasting evaluations onto these categories in line with personal and family preferences. At first glance, these age changes seem to fit the data on minority chil- dren’s attitudes, while majority children use race-based categories earlier. Finally, Piaget expected children over 11 years to justify prejudice with the concept of reciprocity, trans- lated as “outgroups dislike us as much as we dislike them.” However, many of his Swiss interviewees expressed a more mature form of reciprocity known as reconciliation. Rec- onciliation is expressed as “their ingroup preference is as valid as my ingroup preference,”
a view more likely to be associated with tolerance and respect.
Katz (1976) elaborated on this framework by suggesting eight stages in the develop- ment of prejudice. Initially, from 3 to 5 years of age, children observe differences, learn labels and evaluations from others, and begin to add instances of members who fit the label and the evaluations. After 5 years, children elaborate on their categories, in terms of seeing racial cues as a constant feature of people, accumulating more perceptual and cognitive cues to accentuate differences between groups and homogeneity within the racial categories. Finally, prejudice becomes crystallized, bringing together the perceptual, cognitive, and attitudinal components. Aboud (1988) further distinguished between pre- judice in the early preschool years when affective reactions dominate a child’s response, and in the later years when cognitive processes such as self-identity serve as guides for ingroup preference, and reconciliation along with flexibility promote more balanced evaluations.
Cognitive correlational studies. Certain propositions from these theories, concerning age changes and perceptual-cognitive correlates of prejudice, have been confirmed or modi- fied by subsequent research. Evidence is strong that prejudice is present in many White children at 5 years, reaches a peak between 5 and 7, and then declines in some but not all children (see references given previously). This has two implications for research on the cognitive-developmental bases of prejudice. One is that we ought to be looking for preoperational processes involved in the acquisition of prejudice, and concrete operational processes involved in its decline. The second is that simple correlations among prejudice, age, and cognitive processes will be masked to the extent that the sample includes chil- dren on both sides of the peak.
The origins of prejudice appear to lie in the early formation of ethnic categories, their use for self-identification, and the way they are used to exaggerate distinctions between groups and homogeneity within (Bigler & Liben, 1993; Katz & Kofkin, 1997). In addition to categorical thinking, there are a number of other perceptual and cognitive processes in preoperational children that could potentially be instrumental in the acqui- sition of prejudice, including egocentrism and the assumption that race is an immutable biological category (Hirschfeld, 1996). However, more research is necessary to identify which processes directly initiate prejudice.
That prejudice appears to increase during the preoperational years of 5 to 7, rather than after 7 years as proposed by Piaget, is not surprising. As in the acquisition of lan- guage, children are cognitively motivated to make sense of their social world by deriving
simple rules. The phenomenal success they show in discovering patterns of language attests to both their ability and their motivation. Where regularities exist in a social milieu with respect to defining and distinguishing ethnic groups, children will create categories and sometimes over-use them. Where regularities do not exist, as in the ethnically mixed world of minority children or the Switzerland of Piaget, they may not form or use eth- nically based categories, but instead rely on other regularities such as gender or occupa- tion. The latter may acquire bipolar ethnic attitudes after 7 years, following the Piagetian framework, with stronger input from concrete operational skills such as reciprocity.
Finally attitudes do seem to become more consistent with self-identification and behav- ior in the middle childhood years, though they do not necessarily become crystallized and unchangeable. Several concrete operational capabilities, namely conservation, reconcilia- tion, multiple classifications, perceived similarity of groups, and attention to individual differences within groups, are influential in breaking down the over-use of exaggerated, homogeneous categories and reducing prejudice (Bigler & Liben, 1993; Black-Gutman
& Hickson, 1996; Clark et al., 1980; Doyle & Aboud, 1995; Katz & Zalk, 1978).
Because many children who have these concrete operational skills persist in holding biased attitudes, other approaches are needed to explain individual differences. Levy and Dweck (1999) have characterized these children as lay entity theorists who assume that others’
traits and abilities are unchangeable. Children who hold such views about human nature tend to perceive groups as more homogeneous than children who assume that human nature is more changeable. Thus, general schemata about the stability of personality may be related to the persistence of bias.
Cognitive developmental theory lacks a clear explanation of why, in the process of acquiring attitudes, children attach positive evaluations to one group and negative to others. The socialization explanation, namely that evaluations are learned from the family, is not supported by low parent–child correlations. Alternative sources of evaluation may arise from the child’s own emotional development, in areas such as self-esteem and attach- ment to others. Thus, one cognitive developmental explanation focuses on a connection between self-esteem and ethnic self-identification; once children form ethnic categories, they identify with one, and generalize their own self-worth – which is unrealistically high in the preoperational years – to that group. Another source of evaluation is the child’s own emotional attachments to family, teachers and friends. These attachments may gen- eralize to unfamiliar but similar people whether or not they are consistent with the child’s ethnic identity. So even though minority children know their ethnic group, their attach- ments to majority teachers and peers might form the basis of their ethnic evaluations. A different explanation, based on egocentrism or sociocentrism, is needed to explain the devaluation of outgroups. As children distinguish between ethnic categories, outgroup members are perceived as different, inferred to have different preferences and different ways of life, and so judged as wrong (Aboud, 1981).
Social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978; Turner, 1982) proposes another explanation for the positive evaluations given by some minority children to Whites rather than to their ingroup. As we saw, this may happen around age 5. They suggest that once ethnic cate- gories are formed, children begin to identify themselves with one and try to gain posi- tive self-worth through group belonging. If through social comparison one’s group is perceived to be devalued, one will identify with the outgroup to gain worth. Many of
these assumptions do not hold for 5-year-olds. First, although present, ethnic self- identity is not a salient component of self at this age, and therefore unlikely to be used as a basis for self-worth. Secondly, children rarely seek evaluative information for between- group comparisons (Aboud, 1976), and do not translate comparisons into self- evaluations until the age of 8 or 9 (Ruble & Goodnow, 1998). Thus, although the target group’s status may influence evaluations, it is not clear that self-enhancement rather than self-consistency is the motive underlying attitudes, or that the theory explains ethnic atti- tudes of children as young as 5 years. It seems more parsimonious to suggest, as we did in the previous paragraph, that young children generalize their self-esteem or their per- sonal attachments to whomever they perceive as similar.
There may be two ways of viewing age and group status differences in intergroup atti- tudes. If children’s attitudes reflect the societal status hierarchy, then we need to ask: Why do preoperational children, regardless of their group, prefer the high status group? and why is concrete operational thought necessary (but not sufficient) for children, regardless of their group, to see the value of minority or lower status groups? If children’s attitudes are tied to ethnic self-identification, then we would ask: Why is preoperational thought sufficient for majority children to derive ingroup identification and preference? and why is concrete operational thought necessary for minority children to understand the importance of race-based categories for self-identification and preference?
Intervention experimental studies. Because category formation and outgroup homogene- ity appear at a young age, researchers have not attempted to train these skills in order to observe their role in the formation of prejudice. However, a number of cognitive approaches have been used in schools to reduce prejudice. The common one is to provide knowledge about the cultural ways of minority groups. This is unrelated to cognitive developmental theory in that it makes no reference to age-related cognitive structures, but rather to the idea that prejudice is based on ignorance. Typically these studies find no consistent effect of information on reducing prejudice (Pate, 1988; Furuto & Furuto, 1983). In fact, the presentation of information about typical cultural patterns, simplified for young schoolchildren, runs the risk of contributing to group stereotypes. Even if the goal is to instill a positive stereotype, say about the eating habits of Chinese people, it is quite inappropriate to teach children that Chinese Americans use chopsticks, when many of them do not.
More successful are role-playing programs, where students re-examine their attitudes after experiencing powerlessness or discrimination in a simulation game (McGregor, 1993). Another cognitive approach, called antiracist teaching, seeks to reduce prejudice by discussing the social/historical inequalities that underlie racism and discrimination.
Role-playing and antiracist teaching, however, are limited in scope and application. First, they are rarely used with elementary schoolchildren because they require a certain amount of social and emotional sophistication. Secondly, they may unintentionally portray minor- ity members as helpless victims, rather than as potentially respectable friends. Thirdly, they are directed to a White audience only, and the material is often inappropriate for non-White ethnic group members. Fourthly, they may raise feelings of guilt that young children cope with in unproductive ways, for example, by blaming the victim or denying wrongdoing. Although these programs were developed to fill the need for antibias pro-