According to an experiment in China, simply learning to recognize the faces of another ethnic group is enough to limit the implicit racial prejudices in young children in the long term.
Racial attitudes are born practically in the cradle. This finding, a little heartbreaking, is well known to psychologists. Barely a few months old, infants show a greater interest in the faces of their ethnic group. This phenomenon stabilizes and strengthens over time, so that the existence of implicit racial preferences can be shown from early childhood.
For the first time, international researchers in developmental psychology have succeeded in acting on these racial preferences in a sustainable manner. In a recently published study in the review Child Development (in English), they explain having succeeded in reducing the implicit prejudices of children between 4 and 6 years old, simply by teaching them to recognize… black faces.
Black is black
The experiment took place in China. The researchers selected 95 preschool children who, according to their parents, had never been exposed to other ethnicities. Nothing unusual in this country, where over 99% of the population is Han. As expected, toddlers showed a marked implicit preference for Asian faces over black faces.
To measure these types of differences, psychologists commonly employ a procedure known as the implicit association test (IAT). In this case, children were asked to associate smiling or sad smileys with Asian or black faces. The speed of execution gives an idea of how easy it is to create positive associations, depending on the ethnic group considered.
A very simple little game
But the important point is that the researchers managed to reverse the trend. And very simply! They simply gave children a game of individually recognizing the faces of five black people on a tablet. After two sessions, a week apart, the Chinese toddlers had lost their implicit prejudices, and this for at least two months after the experience.
“This shows that it is very effective to intervene in early childhood, before prejudices are really established,” said Kang Lee (University of Toronto), senior author of the study. He believes that the simple fact of individualizing people of another ethnic group can help to limit prejudices. Hence the importance, no doubt, of approaching the paths of historical figures such as Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela or, closer to us, Barack Obama.
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