Developmental origins of anti-Black bias in White children in the United States: Exposure to and beliefs about racial inequality

Anti-Black racism remains a pervasive crisis in the United States. Racist social systems reinforce racial inequalities and perpetuate prejudicial beliefs. These beliefs emerge in childhood, are difficult to change once entrenched in adolescence and adulthood, and lead people to support policies that further reinforce racist systems. Therefore, it is important to identify what leads children to form prejudicial beliefs and biases and what steps can be taken to preempt their development. This study examined how children’s exposure to and beliefs about racial inequalities predicted anti-Black biases in a sample of 646 White children (4 to 8 years) living across the United States. We found that for children with more exposure to racial inequality in their daily lives, those who believed that racial inequalities were caused by intrinsic differences between people were more likely to hold racial biases, whereas those who recognized the extrinsic factors underlying racial inequalities held more egalitarian attitudes. Grounded in constructivist theories in developmental science, these results are consistent with the possibility that racial biases emerge in part from the explanatory beliefs that children construct to understand the racial inequalities they see in the world around them.

In the United States today, the perpetuation of racial bias, prejudice, and discrimination maintain and reflect racist social systems that systematically advantage White people while systematically disadvantaging Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (1–3). One critical step to redressing this injustice is understanding the psychological processes that lead to the formation of racist thoughts and actions (4, 5). However, little is known about the developmental mechanisms that underlie the emergence of these thoughts and actions. Given the scale and scope of racial bias in the United States, there are undoubtedly multiple social and psychological processes involved; for example, experiences with intergroup contact explains ∼4% of variation in bias (5, 6). In the present study, we examined an additional mechanism that we hypothesize underlies the development of anti-Black bias in White children living across the United States: children’s exposure to and explanatory beliefs about racial inequalities. We expected that children who have had more exposure to racial inequalities in their daily lives (i.e., older children living in neighborhoods with larger disparities between Black and White people) would hold racial biases reflective of their beliefs about those inequalities. Specifically, we expected that children who believe that racial inequalities are caused by intrinsic differences between people would have more racial biases because they are coming to view race and status as inherently linked, whereas children who believe that inequalities are caused by extrinsic factors would have fewer racial biases because of the recognition that it would be unfair and inaccurate to judge people based on these extrinsic circumstances. To shed light on this mechanism, we assessed children’s endorsement of intrinsic and extrinsic explanations for racial inequalities, children’s exposure to racial inequality in their residential ZIP code (i.e., Black/White disparities in income and education with children’s age as a measure of the duration of exposure), and children’s racial biases using two standard assessments of bias in childhood (i.e., children’s choice to play with and attitudes about peers from different racial backgrounds (7–14)). We then examined how children’s exposure to and beliefs about racial inequalities interact to predict variation in anti-Black bias during childhood.Explicit anti-Black biases emerge early and continue to develop throughout childhood (12). By 4 to 5 years of age, children—and White children in particular—hold more negative attitudes toward Black than White peers, attribute more negative intentions to Black than White peers, and are less likely to form friendships with Black than White peers (7–14). These biases are consequential. The majority of Black children and adolescents report experiencing racial prejudice and discrimination and suffer from increased stress, decreased social belonging, and restricted educational and extracurricular opportunities because of these experiences (15–17). Early emerging biases also serve as the developmental roots for the racial bias, prejudice, and discrimination that become deeply entrenched in adolescence and adulthood and lead people to support racist social policies (18–20). Importantly, there is also substantial individual variation in the early development of racial bias; some children develop more racial biases than do others (12, 13). Early childhood is therefore an ideal time for disrupting the formation of problematic beliefs; by understanding the predictors of this individual variation (i.e., why some children develop more biases than others) at a time when children’s beliefs are emerging and particularly sensitive to new experiences, we can better inform future efforts to understand and disrupt the formation of racial biases before they become deeply entrenched.In the present study, we used an online platform for conducting remote, unmoderated psychological research with children (21) to examine the environmental and psychological factors that predict the development of anti-Black bias in a sample of 646 White children 4- to 8-years-old (300 female, 346 male) living across the United States. We focused on White children in this age range because they are particularly likely to develop anti-Black biases and hold disproportionate power and influence over social contexts by virtue of their racial privilege (3–5, 12, 13). Children participated from 464 unique ZIP codes representing 47 different states; this degree of cultural, geographic, and socioeconomic diversity allowed for an analysis of the variance in children’s environment that is not possible with traditional, in-person approaches to developmental science. Using the online platform, children completed the study independently from their home computer without interacting with a researcher, reducing concerns for self-presentation. Research sessions were recorded via the computer’s webcam for subsequent coding.