Children learn about prejudice

How do children come to realize that they themselves might be targets of prejudice? It may depend on their age. New research conducted at the University of Toronto shows that a six-year-old may be influenced most by direct instruction about prejudice, but once that child gets closer to 10, she begins to rely more on her own experiences. "Young children are information hungry - they are eagerly searching for general rules to help in mapping out their social worlds," write researchers Sonia Kang, an assistant professor in the Department of Management at U of'T Mississauga and the Rotman School of Management, and Professor Michael Inzlicht of the Department of Psychology in this month's Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin . In two studies that investigated how children learn about rejection, the researchers found external instruction and experiences play distinct roles in shaping how children characterize other groups of people. Previous research has shown that between ages three and six, children learn about and begin to apply stereotypes and can recognize overt discrimination. But between ages six and 10, children become aware of other people's stereotypes, able to perceive subtle discrimination by age 10. While previous research has focused on how children perceive others, Kang and Inzlicht extended this work by providing "a deeper understanding of how children learn that they themselves may be targets of discrimination" by members of other groups, Kang says.