Racial Identity Development and Stereotypes in Childhood and Early Adolescence: Understanding the Path of Resistance

在具有里程碑意义的布朗诉教育委员会案(1954)过去近60年后，不平等仍然困扰着美国的教育系统。虽然对教育公平设置了明确的障碍(例如法律)，但助长教育差距的隐性态度和信念依然存在。例如，认为美国黑人不如美国白人聪明的文化信念仍然存在，并对儿童的自我概念、发展和学业结果产生影响。现有的关于陈规定型观念和身份认同过程的研究主要集中在青少年和成年人，并且主要集中在个人坚持或适应这些陈规定型观念的方式上。然而，最近的实证研究表明，文化刻板印象的影响可能早于中学时代。这一博士后项目的双重目标是了解(A)儿童时期种族认同的起源和早期发展以及(B)青年挑战或抵制普遍存在的文化陈规定型观念的方式。这些目标是通过安德鲁·梅尔佐夫博士(赞助科学家)和Leoandra Onnie Rogers博士(博士后研究员)进行的跨学科工作以及华盛顿大学最先进的研究中心学习和脑科学研究所(I-Labs)的支持下实现的。在这些研究中，对不同种族公立学校的小学适龄儿童进行了深入的访谈和测试，提供了一种衡量种族陈规定型观念如何影响不同发育年龄和种族群体的种族认同的方法。这些数据来自明确的口头报告，然后被用作改进内隐认知测试的输入，以捕捉种族刻板印象影响儿童内隐种族身份的方式。这项研究旨在增加对青春期前刻板印象过程如何运作的了解，并为探索与教育不平等有关的心理因素奠定基础。知识价值：种族认同文献浩如烟海，在理论和方法上也多种多样。本研究整合了理论视角和方法论方法来考察种族认同的形成。重点放在幼儿对有关青春期之前种族认同过程的文献中的一个空白的反应。来自发展心理学和社会心理学的新研究方法的使用为种族认同文献增加了跨学科的视角。这项研究还为青年挑战刻板印象的方式提供了新的信息。通过认识到儿童具有抵抗负面种族成见的能力，并调查为什么一些儿童在这方面取得成功，它使我们能够揭示抵抗过程如何抵消文化成见的有害影响。此外，该项目通过使用明确、深入的访谈技术，为身份认同研究提供了新的方法论工具，以帮助设计更适合于研究幼儿的量化测量。更广泛的影响：这项研究的结果有可能减少陈规定型观念对青年发展的影响，特别是对少数群体的影响，从而影响教育不平等。随着更好地理解儿童如何解释种族陈规定型观念，如与智力有关的陈规定型观念，教师就能更好地教会他们与有害的信念作斗争，否则这些信念可能会破坏他们的学习成绩和职业追求，特别是在他们代表性不足的学科，如STEM领域。这些信息对父母、教师和从事儿童工作的其他从业者以及儿童本身都很有用，在社会层面上也有相当大的好处。I-Labs已经与联邦、州和地方机构建立了伙伴关系，并在儿童学习和教育方面建立了公私伙伴关系。通过i-Labs进行这项研究，可以将科学发现传播给可以使用它们的人。

Nearly 60 years post the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education (1954), inequality still plagues the nation's education system. While explicit barriers to educational equity (e.g., laws) have been put in place, implicit attitudes and beliefs that foster educational disparities remain. For example, the cultural belief that Black Americans are less intelligent than their White American counterparts still persists, and has implications for children's self-concepts, development, and academic outcomes. The existing research on stereotyping and identity processes focuses primarily on adolescents and adults, and chiefly on the ways that individuals adhere or accommodate to these stereotypes. Yet, recent empirical research suggests that the influence of cultural stereotypes may start earlier than middle-school. The dual objectives of this postdoctoral project are to understand (a) the origins and early development of racial identity in childhood and (b) the ways that youth challenge or resist prevailing cultural stereotypes. These objectives are achieved through interdisciplinary work conducted by Drs. Andrew Meltzoff (Sponsoring Scientist) and Leoandra Onnie Rogers (Postdoctoral Fellow), and the support of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS), a state-of-the-art research center at the University of Washington. In these studies, in-depth interviews and tests with elementary school-age children in racially diverse public schools provide a measure of how racial stereotypes shape racial identity across developmental ages and racial groups. These data, which come from explicit verbal reports, are then used as input to refining tests of implicit cognition to capture the ways that racial stereotypes inform children's implicit racial identities. This research aims to add to the knowledge of how stereotype processes operate prior to adolescence, and also to lay the groundwork for exploring psychological factors related to educational inequality. Intellectual merit: The racial identity literature is vast and diverse in theory and methods. This research integrates theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to examine racial identity formation. The focus is on early childhood responds to a gap in the literature concerning racial identity processes prior to the adolescent years. The use of new research techniques from developmental and social psychology adds an interdisciplinary perspective to the racial identity literature. The research also contributes new information on the ways that youth challenge stereotypes. By recognizing that children possess the ability to resist negative racial stereotypes, and investigating why some children are successful at this, it allows us to uncover how resistance processes might counteract the pernicious effects of cultural stereotypes. Moreover, the project provides new methodological tools for identity research by using explicit, in-depth interview techniques to help design more quantitative measures that are suitable for studying young children. Broader impacts: The findings from the study have the potential to impact educational inequality by diminishing the effects of stereotypes on youth development, for minority groups in particular. With better understanding of how children interpret racial stereotypes, such as those related to intellectual ability, teachers are better positioned to teach them to contest pernicious beliefs that otherwise may undermine their academic performance and career pursuits, particularly in disciplines where they are underrepresented such as STEM fields. Such information is useful for parents, teachers and other practitioners working with children, and the children themselves, with considerable benefits at a societal level. I-LABS has established partnerships with federal, state, and local agencies and public-private partnership on childhood learning and education. Operating this research through I-LABS creates the ability to disseminate the scientific discoveries to people who can use them.