Children's and Adolescents' Racial Biases about Peer Relationships

这个项目的目标是调查儿童在熟悉的日常环境中对同伴关系的群体间偏见。使用直接评估，先前的研究表明，儿童在直接的情况下使用道德原因评估种族排斥是错误的（Killen, Lee-Kim, McGlothlin, & Stangor, 2002）。在复杂或模棱两可的情况下，儿童经常使用各种原因，如群体功能或个人选择来为排斥辩护。本研究将考察儿童表现出内隐和外显种族偏见的方式。对成年人的研究表明，虽然在过去的50年里，显性偏见已经显著减少，但隐性偏见仍然相当普遍（Dovidio & Gaertner, 1986）。大多数研究都没有采用适合儿童发育的测量方法；他们也不评估同伴情境下的偏见。本研究的试点工作建立了两种评估的可靠性和有效性，用于调查儿童使用模糊图片卡和感知相似性测量的隐性种族偏见。这些工具将在本调查中用于评估儿童对涉及跨种族同伴关系的环境的评价。使用社会认知领域模型，本研究将调查儿童是否以及如何将种族偏见应用于他们对跨种族同伴的模糊图片卡的解释，他们对相似性的看法，以及他们对跨种族友谊潜力的判断。在这个评估中，社会接触被描述为反映儿童日常的、熟悉的社会环境，例如操场上、公园里和学校院子里的情况。此外，本研究将研究儿童学校环境的种族构成如何影响儿童在同伴关系决策中应用种族偏见的程度。此外，儿童的内隐和外显偏见将被检查，以了解是否没有表现出外显偏见的儿童，然而，当被要求对同伴关系做出判断时，表现出内隐偏见。这项研究将调查在与道德相关的同伴关系背景下，孩子们在决定同伴相遇时是否以及如何考虑种族因素。一项研究将主要关注就读于不同学校（同质和异质）的儿童的内隐偏见，另一项研究将使用多种方法来了解内隐和外显群体间判断之间的关系。鉴于先前的研究表明，在评估同伴情境时使用了不同形式的社会推理，本研究将在发展性社会认知领域理论的指导下，试图确定在评估同伴交流时是否考虑了种族偏见。从这个项目中获得的知识将使教育工作者、学校心理学家和学校专业人员能够制定课程和干预计划，以一种有发展意义的方式解决学校中群体间紧张关系和多样性的问题。鉴于劳动力和成人世界的多元文化性质，促进儿童与来自不同背景的人舒适互动的能力至关重要；实现这一目标的第一步是了解儿童群体间偏见何时以及如何在各种社会背景和情况下表现出来，这是本研究的中心目标。

The goals of this project are to investigate children's intergroup bias regarding peer relationships in familiar, everyday situations. Using direct assessments, previous research has shown that children evaluate racial exclusion as wrong using moral reasons in straightforward situations (Killen, Lee-Kim, McGlothlin, & Stangor, 2002). In complex or ambiguous situations, children often use a mixture of reasons, such as group functioning or personal choice to justify exclusion. The present studies will examine the ways in which children display implicit and explicit racial biases. Studies with adults have shown that while explicit biases have diminished dramatically over 50 years, implicit biases are still quite prevalent (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1986). Most of this research has not employed measurements that are developmentally appropriate for children; nor do they assess bias in the context of peer situations. Pilot work for the present study established the reliability and validity of two assessments for investigating implicit racial bias in children using ambiguous pictures cards and perceptions of similarity measurements. These instruments will be used in the present investigation to assess children's evaluations of contexts involving cross-race peer relationships. Using the social-cognitive domain model, this research will investigate whether and how children apply racial biases to their interpretations of ambiguous picture cards with cross-race peer dyads, to their perceptions of similarity, and to their judgments about the potential for cross-race friendships. In this assessment, social encounters are depicted that reflect everyday, familiar, social contexts for children, such as situations on the playground, at the park, and in the school yard. In addition, this research will examine how the ethnic make-up of children's school environments influences the extent to which children apply racial biases to decisions about peer relationships. Further, children's implicit and explicit bias will be examined in order to understand whether children who do not demonstrate explicit bias, nonetheless, exhibit implicit biases when asked to make judgments about peer relationships.This research will investigate whether, and how, children take race into account when making decisions about peer encounters in morally-relevant peer relationship contexts. One study will focus primarily on implicit biases from children attending different schools (homogeneous and heterogeneous), and a second study will use multiple measures to understand the relationships between implicit and explicit intergroup judgments. Given that previous work has shown that different forms of social reasoning are used when evaluating peer contexts, this research will seek to determine if racial biases are brought into consideration when evaluating peer exchanges, guided by developmental social-cognitive domain theory. The knowledge resulting from this project will enable educators, school psychologists, and school professionals to develop curriculum and intervention programs to address issues of intergroup tensions, and diversity in schools in a developmentally meaningful way. Given the multicultural nature of the workforce and adult world, it is essential to facilitate children's ability to interact comfortably with individuals from diverse backgrounds; a first step towards this goal is understanding when and how children's intergroup biases manifest in various social contexts and situations, and that is the central aim of this investigation.