Minority children's intergroup attitudes about peer relationships

Abstract

Intergroup attitudes were assessed in African‐American (N=70) and non‐African‐American minority (N=80) children, evenly divided by gender, in first (M=6.5 years old) and fourth (M=9.6 years old) grades attending mixed‐ethnicity public schools in a suburban area of a large mid‐Atlantic city in the USA. Children were interviewed to test hypotheses about implicit racial biases, perceptions of similarity between peer dyads, and judgments about cross‐race friendships. Implicit racial biases emerged when children evaluated ambiguous picture cards, with children viewing a White child as more likely to be a transgressor than a Black child in certain situations. There were no racial biases when evaluating potential cross‐race friendship (it was judged to be feasible); nor was there any evidence of an outgroup homogeneity effect. Children who used ethnicity as a reason for judging peers to be similar, however, were less likely to judge that the cross‐race dyads could be friends. The findings indicate the ways in which minority children's judgments about the majority and their perceptions of similarity between peer dyads influence their interpretations of peer interactions.