Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe development course of implicit and explicit gender attitudes between the ages of 5 and adulthood is investigated. Findings demonstrate that implicit and explicit own‐gender preferences emerge early in both boys and girls, but implicit own‐gender preferences are stronger in young girls than boys. In addition, female participants' attitudes remain largely stable over development, whereas male participants' implicit and explicit attitudes show an age‐related shift towards increasing female positivity. Gender attitudes are an anomaly in that social evaluations dissociate from social status, with both male and female participants tending to evaluate female more positively than male.

AbstractThe prevalence of implicit intergroup bias in adults underscores the importance of knowing when during development such biases are most amenable to change. Although research suggests that implicit intergroup bias undergoes little change across development, no studies have directly examined whether developmental differences exist in the capacity for novel implicit associations to form or change. The present study examined this issue among children ages 5–12. Results from over 800 children provided evidence that novel implicit associations formed quickly, regardless of child age, association type (evaluative or non‐evaluative) or the target of the association (social or non‐social). Moreover, the magnitude of these changes was comparable across conditions. Coupled with similar findings among adults, these data underscore the importance of first impressions in shaping implicit intergroup bias and provide further evidence that the acquisition of implicit associations is governed by a domain‐general mechanism that may be fully in place by age 5.

AbstractPrevious research has suggested that infants exhibit a preference for familiar over unfamiliar social groups (e.g., preferring individuals from their own language group over individuals from a foreign language group). However, because past studies often employ forced‐choice procedures, it is not clear whether infants' intergroup preferences are driven by positivity toward members of familiar groups, negativity toward members of unfamiliar groups, or both. Across six experiments, we implemented a habituation procedure to independently measure infants' positive and negative evaluations of speakers of familiar and unfamiliar languages. We report that by 1 year of age, infants positively evaluate individuals who speak a familiar language, but do not negatively evaluate individuals who speak an unfamiliar language (Experiments 1 and 2). Several experiments rule out lower‐level explanations (Experiments 3–6). Together these data suggest that children's early social group preferences may be shaped by positive evaluations of familiar group(s), rather than negative evaluations of unfamiliar groups.