Overhearing Children’s and Adults’ Negative Messages Influences Children’s Intergroup Attitudes

Abstract

Understanding how children develop intergroup attitudes is of both practical and theoretical importance. From as young as 3 years, children demonstrate preferences for their own social group at the expense of out-groups. With age, these preferences can evolve into out-group derogation. One way that children might acquire intergroup bias is by overhearing verbal messages. The influence of such messages on children’s attitudes is likely to depend on the speaker’s knowledge, which can be deduced from the speaker’s age. In this study, 3- to 9-year-olds (N = 131) overheard a speaker (who was either an adult or child) make negative claims or no claim about a novel social group. Children’s implicit and explicit intergroup attitudes were assessed immediately after overhearing the speaker and after a two-week delay. At both time points, children who overheard the speaker’s negative claims demonstrated stronger negative attitudes toward the novel group compared to children who did not hear the speaker’s claim. This effect was found among older (6.50 – 9.25 years) but not younger children (3.75 – 6.49 years). In general, children’s attitudes were equally influenced whether they had overheard an adult or child speaker.