Consequences of "Minimal" Group Affiliations in Children

Three experiments (total N = 140) tested the hypothesis that 5-year-old children's membership in randomly assigned "minimal" groups would be sufficient to induce intergroup bias. Children were randomly assigned to groups and engaged in tasks involving judgments of unfamiliar in-group...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child development 2011-05, Vol.82 (3), p.793-811
Main Authors: Dunham, Yarrow, Baron, Andrew Scott, Carey, Susan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Association
Attitude
Behavior
Behaviour in groups
Bias
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child Behavior
Child development
Child, Preschool
Children
Children & youth
Choice Behavior
Competitiveness
Developmental psychology
EMPIRICAL ARTICLES
Familiarity
Female
Friendship
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gender bias
Gender Identity
Group Activities
Group Membership
Humans
Hypothesis Testing
In-group
Ingroups
Intergroup bias
Intergroup relations
Judgment
Labeling (of Persons)
Male
Membership
Memory
Peer Group
Peer Relationship
Personality psychology
Preferences
Psychological attitudes
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reciprocity
Resource Allocation
Semantics
Social Behavior
Social biases
Social groups
Social Identification
Social identity
Social psychology
Stereotypes
Student Attitudes
We they distinction
Young Children
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Summary:Three experiments (total N = 140) tested the hypothesis that 5-year-old children's membership in randomly assigned "minimal" groups would be sufficient to induce intergroup bias. Children were randomly assigned to groups and engaged in tasks involving judgments of unfamiliar in-group or out-group children. Despite an absence of information regarding the relative status of groups or any competitive context, in-group preferences were observed on explicit and implicit measures of attitude and resource allocation (Experiment 1), behavioral attribution, and expectations of reciprocity, with preferences persisting when groups were not described via a noun label (Experiment 2). In addition, children systematically distorted incoming information by preferentially encoding positive information about in-group members (Experiment 3). Implications for the developmental origins of intergroup bias are discussed.
ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01577.x