Prejudice & bias
Does getting to know several people of another race reduce bias?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Chinese preschoolers who learned the names of and moved in sync with four different Black adults lost their implicit anti-Black bias, while children who did the same with only one Black adult did not.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Two-arm randomized pretest-posttest experiment: a 2-minute video-based synchronous movement game with four named Black instructors (differentiation) versus one named Black instructor (no-differentiation), with no same-race control arm
- N
- N=61 · 66 children were randomized (33 per condition); 5 were excluded from the implicit-bias analysis by speed/accuracy criteria, leaving 61
- Population
- Han Chinese preschool children aged about 4-6 years (mean age 5.90 years) tested at school in China
- Outcome
- Implicit racial bias (D score on a child-friendly Implicit Racial Bias Test) and explicit bias (own-race choices across four everyday scenarios), before and after the manipulation
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Key findings
At pretest the children showed strong implicit anti-Black bias. Only the differentiation group's implicit bias fell, from a D score of about 0.55 to 0.06 (no longer different from zero), whereas the one-instructor group's change was not significant, giving a significant condition-by-time interaction. Explicit own-race preference dropped in both groups (the proportion of own-race choices fell from 0.79 to 0.60 overall), and at posttest the four-instructor group chose own-race people at chance (a proportion of 0.52) while the one-instructor group still showed a preference (0.68).
Methodology
66 Han Chinese children aged around 5-6 were randomly assigned to one of two versions of a 2-minute video game in which they copied simple movements such as clapping and jumping jacks. In the differentiation condition each movement was led by a different named Black man, and children repeatedly recalled all four names; in the no-differentiation condition one named Black man led every movement. Implicit bias was measured before and after with a tablet reaction-time test pairing Chinese or Black faces with smiles or frowns, and explicit bias with forced choices between a Chinese and a Black doctor, teacher, coach or guide.
Limitations
Bias was measured only immediately after a 2-minute session, so the study says nothing about how long the effect lasts or whether it changes behaviour toward real people. There was no same-race control group here (the authors rely on earlier studies), so general practice or retest effects are only partly ruled out, and the explicit bias drop in both groups could partly reflect that. Contact was via video with Black men only, children were one age group in one culture, and the sample was modest; the reported statistics also contain some inconsistencies (for example group sizes and one repeated t value), so exact numbers should be read with caution.
How this study connects
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