Racial bias : from early childhood, it is possible to act

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Published the 15.10.2017 at 18: 45

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Racial attitudes are born practically in the cradle. This statement of fact, a little heartbreaking, is well known to psychologists. Barely aged a few months, infants show a stronger interest in the faces of their ethnic group. This phenomenon stabilizes and strengthens over time, so that we can show the existence of preferences racial implicit from early childhood.

For the first time, international researchers in developmental psychology have managed to act on these preferences racial in a sustainable way. In a study recently published in the journal Child Development (in English), they explain to have managed to reduce the biases implied children between 4 and 6 years, simply to learn to recognize… of the black faces.

Black is black

The experiment took place in China. The researchers selected 95 kindergarten children who had, in the words of their parents, never been exposed to other ethnic groups. Nothing unusual in this country, where more than 99 % of the population is Han. As they expected, the children showed a preference implicitly marked for the faces of Asians compared to the faces of Blacks.

To measure these differences, psychologists have commonly used a procedure called ” association test implicit (IAT). In this case, he was asked the children to associate smiley faces with a smiling or sad faces, asian or black. The speed of execution gives an idea of the ease to create positive associations, depending on the ethnic group considered.

A small, very simple game

But the important point is that the researchers have succeeded in curbing the trend. And very simply ! They have simply proposed to the children playing a game that involves recognizing the individual faces of five black people on a tablet. At the end of two sessions, a week apart, the toddlers chinese had lost their prejudices implied, and this for at least two months after the experience.

“It shows that it is very effective to intervene early in childhood, before prejudices are not really prepared,” says Kang Lee (university of Toronto), author senior of the study. It is estimated that the simple fact of individualizing of persons of another ethnic group can contribute to limiting prejudice. Hence the importance, presumably, to address the course of historical figures such as Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela or, more recently, Barack Obama.