The Development of Racial Attitudes among Chinese Adolescents and Adults

Abstract

Race and race-related issues are pervasive in the United States, causing detrimental consequences at individual and societal levels. Not only in the United states, racial conflict also exists in racially homogeneous countries, such as China, given the rising economic development and cultural communications between Chinese society and other nations. The present article aims to reveal the development of racial attitudes among Chinese adolescents and adults. We assessed implicit and explicit racial attitudes toward Black and White people among 60 Chinese participants (M age = 18.04; 34 female). Participants implicit racial attitudes were measured via an Implicit Association Test (IAT), and their explicit racial attitudes were measured via an explicit scale. We found that Chinese adolescents and adults displayed both implicit and explicit racial biases against black people; however, they did not show implicit or explicit racial biases against white people. We also found that participants implicit and explicit racial biases were not affected by their age or gender.