By Stephen Beech via SWNS
Children under eight-years-old are less likely than adults to see discrimination as harmful, suggests a new study.
Researchers set out to establish when attitudes underlying discrimination, and specifically racial discrimination, are formed.
Previous studies found discriminatory views increase as children grow older.
However, new work by a team of New York University (NYU) psychology researchers shows that young children in the United States are less likely than adults to see discrimination as harmful, indicating such beliefs begin at an early age.
The study also found that youngsters see discriminatory acts – defined as “negative actions motivated by the victim’s group membership” – as less serious than identical harmful acts motivated by other reasons, unrelated to the victim’s social identities.
Study lead author Dr. Vivian Liu, an NYU doctoral student at the time of the study, said: “Children frequently encounter discrimination in their daily lives – as witnesses, victims, and, sometimes, as perpetrators.
“Our research reveals that, unlike adults, children in the US view discriminatory acts as more permissible than identical acts motivated by other reasons.
“This view of discrimination may lead children to engage in discriminatory behavior themselves, make them less likely to seek help when targeted by discrimination, and reduce their willingness to intervene when witnessing discrimination against others.”
But the researchers say their findings, published in the journal Cognitive Psychology, offer some reasons for optimism.
They showed that, by the age of eight, children begin to recognize discrimination as more harmful when it targets certain groups.
Study senior author Professor Andrei Cimpian, of NYU’s Department of Psychology, said: “This suggests that children can understand why discrimination is particularly harmful while also underscoring the importance of discussing these issues with children from an early age.”
The research consisted of four studies involving nearly 600 children aged four- to nine-years-old and more than 600 American adults.
The research team presented the participants with scenarios involving harmful actions between members of different made-up groups, comparing situations where someone was harmed because of their group membership, and discrimination, compared to being harmed for other, personal, reasons.
In one of the studies, adult and child participants saw a member of a group harming an outgroup member.
The participants were told the harm was motivated either by dislike of the victim’s group or by personal dislike for the victim.
Both the perpetrator and the victim were introduced with a proper name – such as “Modi” or “Bosa” – so children could keep track of them throughout the story.
The proper names were chosen to be uncommon in English so that children would not associate the characters with other people they knew with similar names.
In another study, the researchers varied whether the fictional groups were described in “essentialist” terms – as biologically based and unchangeable – to model how children conceive real-world social categories such as race and gender, or instead in “temporary” terms, such as sports teams.
Overall, the children, compared to adults, saw discriminatory acts as less serious than identical harmful acts motivated by personal reasons.
The studies also found that while adults viewed discrimination against “essentialized” groups – those paralleling gender or race – as more serious than discrimination against temporary groups, like sports teams, children did not make that distinction.
However, in one study the researchers asked participants to consider the “status” of the groups by providing information such as: “The Circles always get what they want and the Squares never get what they want”, and “Sometimes the Circles get what they want and sometimes the Squares get what they want.”
Dr. Liu, now a postdoctoral fellow at University College Dublin, and Cimpian noted that, in the majority of societies, the most common and concerning acts of discrimination occur against lower-status groups.
They said younger children – roughly, before the age of seven- or eight years old – did not differentiate between discrimination against a lower- compared to the equal-status group.
In contrast, children older than seven or eight began to recognize discrimination as more harmful when it targeted lower-status groups.
Cimpian added: “Understanding how children’s views of discrimination differ from adults’ is essential for developing strategies to help them recognize and resist discriminatory behavior early in development.”
