Children’s and Adults’ Predictions of Black, White, and Multiracial Friendship Patterns

Posted in Articles, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2016-12-22 02:11Z by Steven

Children’s and Adults’ Predictions of Black, White, and Multiracial Friendship Patterns

Journal of Cognition and Development
Published online: 2016-11-22
20 pages
DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2016.1262374

Steven O. Roberts, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Psychology
University of Michigan

Amber D. Williams, National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Texas, Austin

Susan A. Gelman, Heinz Werner Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Linguistics
University of Michigan

Cross-race friendships can promote the development of positive racial attitudes, yet they are relatively uncommon and decline with age. In an effort to further our understanding of the extent to which children expect cross-race friendships to occur, we examined 4- to 6-year-olds’ (and adults’) use of race when predicting other children’s friendship patterns. In contrast to previous research, we included White (Studies 1 and 2), Black (Study 3), and Multiracial (Study 4) participants and examined how they predicted the friendship patterns of White, Black, and Multiracial targets. Distinct response patterns were found as a function of target race, participant age group, and participant race. Participants in all groups predicted that White children would have mostly White friends and Black children would have mostly Black friends. Moreover, most participant groups predicted that Multiracial children would have Black and White friends. However, White adults predicted that Multiracial children would have mostly Black friends, whereas Multiracial children predicted that Multiracial children would have mostly White friends. These data are important for understanding beliefs about cross-race friendships, social group variation in race-based reasoning, and the experiences of Multiracial individuals more broadly.

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