Developmental differences in the malleability of implicit racial bias following exposure to counterstereotypical exemplars.

Abstract

Research suggests that exposure to stories about Black adults who are contributing positively to their community can reduce implicit pro-White/anti-Black racial bias in older children (ages 9–12). The aim of the current research was to replicate and extend this finding by investigating whether a different child-friendly manipulation exposing children to positive Black exemplars and negative White exemplars could decrease implicit pro-White/anti-Black racial bias in children aged 5 to 12 years, both immediately following the intervention and 1 hr later. In addition, a second aim of this research was to examine whether child-friendly positive exemplar exposure would similarly reduce adults’ implicit racial bias. In a sample of White and Asian Canadians (N = 478; 182 male, 296 female), recruited from a community science center (children) and a public university in Vancouver (adults), 9- to 12-year-old children's racial bias was reduced up to 1 hr after this new intervention, while the effectiveness of the intervention on 5- to 8-year-old children's bias was less clear. Interestingly, this intervention did not reduce adult levels of bias. The results of a follow-up study (N = 96; 23 male, 72 female, 1 nonbinary) indicate that exposure to child exemplars can reduce bias in adults, but only when additional instructions are provided to internalize the presented association. Thus, the current study provides evidence that depicting counterstereotypical exemplars can reduce implicit racial bias in children for up to 1 hr after exemplar exposure, but there may be important developmental differences in the conditions required to change this bias. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)