Developmental Perspectives:

1
Developmental Perspectives

• How Do Stigma Prejudice Develop in Children?

2
Awareness of Social Categories

• Even very young children can demonstrate
  awareness of social categories.
• Children form categories to simplify the world
  and free up mental resources.
• Two types
• Explicit awareness conscious
• Implicit awareness unconscious or preverbal

3
Implicit Awareness of Social Categories

• Children implicitly recognize differences between
  basic social categories without being able to
  verbalize those differences.
• Research suggests that infants can detect
  differences in gender and age, but not race.
• This suggests that the ability to form social
  categories is an innate process.

4
Explicit Awareness of Social Categories

• Gender category awareness
• Young children are asked to classify photos of
  people based on gender.
• Results showed that children use gender labels
  appropriately by 2½ or 3 years of age.
• Racial category awareness
• Regardless of their own ethnicity, by age 4 or 5,
  children can use the racial categories Black and
  White correctly, and between 5 and 9 for other
  racial groups.
• Research suggests that children become aware of
  racial categories because they see adults
  responding differently to people of different
  races.

5
The Development of Racial Prejudice

• White children develop racial attitudes, both
  positive and negative ones, between ages 3 and 4.
  Prejudice peaks around 4 or 5 years of age, and
  then declines sometime between ages 6 and 9.
• Black children also develop racial attitudes at 3
  or 4 years of age, but show less stability than
  White children in racial preference patterns.
• Preference patterns for children of other races
  are less consistent than they are for White
  children.

6
The Development of Gender-Based Prejudice

• Gender-based prejudice emerges by age 3 and is
  quite strong by age 4.
• Prejudice is initially symmetrical and
  bidirectional.
• Boys hold negative attitudes about girls.
• Girls hold equally negative attitudes about boys.
• Between age 4 and 8, both boys and girls reject
  feminine characteristics and value masculine
  characteristics.
• After age 8, other-sex prejudice declines.

7
Theories of Prejudice Development

• Three theories of how prejudice develops in
  children
• Social Learning Theory
• Inner State Theories
• Cognitive Developmental Theories

8
Social Learning Theory

• Explains prejudice in terms of direct
  reinforcement, modeling and imitation, and
  vicarious learning.
• Direct teaching of prejudice is not very common.
• Prejudiced attitudes more often come from
  indirect teaching of prejudice from family and
  peers, and symbolic models in the media.

9
Inner State Theories

• Focus on the development of prejudice in terms of
  age-related changes in personality and other
  individual-difference variables.
• Proposes that prejudice is caused by something
  inside the person, such as personality. (ex
  authoritarianism).
• Genetics also influence personality and
  prejudice.
• Inherited predispositions may play a role in the
  development of authoritarianism, SDO, and
  prejudice.
• Authoritarian beliefs may also be acquired
  through socialization.

10
Cognitive Developmental Theories

• Suggest changes in prejudice are the result of
  cognitive growth.
• Emphasize the ongoing interplay between
  childrens mental development and their
  environment.
• The development of prejudice involves abrupt
  shifts that correspond to changes in cognitive
  stages.

11
Cognitive Developmental Theories

• Piagets theory describes the development of
  prejudice as shifts through
• Egocentric thought in preoperational stage
• Sociocentric thought in concrete operations stage
• Reciprocal thought in formal operations stage
• As the nature of childrens thinking changes in
  each stage, so does the way they conceptualize
  prejudice.