On implicit racial prejudice against infants.

Lukas J. Wolf, Gregory Maio, Johan Karremans, Caroline Leygue

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Because of the innocence and dependence of children, it would be reassuring to believe that implicit racial prejudice against out-group children is lower than implicit prejudice against out-group adults. Yet, prior research has not directly tested whether or not adults exhibit less spontaneous prejudice toward child targets than adult targets. Three studies addressed this issue, contrasting adults with very young child targets. Studies 1A and B revealed that participants belonging to an ethnic majority group (White Europeans) showed greater spontaneous favorability toward their ethnic in-group than toward an ethnic out-group (South Asians), and this prejudice emerged equally for infant and adult targets. Study 2 found that this pattern occurred even when race was not a salient dimension of categorization in the implicit measure. Thus, there was a robust preference for in-group children over out-group children, and there was no evidence that this prejudice is weaker than that exhibited toward adults.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)789-800
Number of pages12
JournalGroup Processes and Intergroup Relations
Volume20
Issue number6
Early online date21 Feb 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2017

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