When Multiracial Individuals Are the Numerical Majority: Children's Racial Attitudes in the Dominican Republic.

RACISM; ATTITUDE (Psychology); RACE; PREJUDICES; GROUP identity; STEREOTYPES; THEORY; TEACHERS; SOCIAL classes; EMOTIONS; CHILDREN

The Dominican Republic is a uniquely valuable context in which to study children's racial stereotyping and prejudice, in part because multiracial individuals comprise the majority of the population and race is viewed largely as a continuous rather than dichotomous construct. In two studies, we use developmental and social theories to ground an exploration of Dominican children's racial biases. In studies 1 (n = 54; ages 6-11) and 2 (n = 122; ages 6-11), children were given measures of racial identity, preference, stereotyping, and/or status. As expected, children identified their own race in a manner consistent with others (e.g., their teachers). Across a variety of tasks, children failed to consistently favor members of a specific racial group-as indicated by differing levels of racial stereotyping and associations of social status with different races. They did, however, sometimes systematically express greater liking of individuals of mixed racial heritage, a finding that was contingent on the modality of assessment (i.e., whether race was framed as a continuous vs. dichotomous category, and measured via nonforced vs. forced-choice methods). Implications for current theories of racial attitude development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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