A Cross-Cultural Investigation of Minority and Non-White Majority Children's Implicit Attitudes Toward Racial Outgroups

In this research I aimed to increase our understanding of the early emergence of racial biases by examining the implicit racial attitudes of minority and non-White majority children in two cultures. In Study 1, minority children in Canada completed an Implicit Association Test to measure implicit racial attitudes. Young non-Black minority children held a pro-White (versus Black) implicit bias. However, unlike previous findings, the magnitude of bias was lower for older children. In Study 2, I examined the implicit attitudes of Malay (majority) and Chinese (minority) children and adults in Brunei with limited contact with White or Black peers. Children showed implicit pro-White and pro-Chinese (versus Black) biases by early childhood, but showed no pro-White (versus Chinese) bias. Together, these findings support theorizing about the development of implicit intergroup cognition (Dunham et al., 2008), but suggest that context can shape these biases to a greater extent than was previously thought.