The Development of Implicit Attitudes

By A. Baron, Mahzarin R. Banaji. Psychology Science, 2006

604 citations recorded by the source corpus.

To understand the origin and development of implicit attitudes, we measured race attitudes in White American 6-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults by first developing a child-oriented version of the Implicit Association Test (Child IAT). Remarkably, implicit pro-White/ anti-Black bias was evident even in the youngest group, with self-reported attitudes revealing bias in the same direction. In 10-year-olds and adults, the same magnitude of implicit race bias was observed, although self-reported race attitudes became substantially less biased in older children and vanished entirely in adults, who self-reported equally favorable attitudes toward Whites and Blacks. These data are the first to show an asymmetry in the development of implicit and explicit race attitudes, with explicit attitudes becoming more egalitarian and implicit attitudes remaining stable and favoring the in-group across development. We offer a tentative suggestion that mean levels of implicit and explicit attitudes diverge around age 10.

Subfields: Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7e9cb22c88d0a13301c8497f72cb4ca2719665f2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Social Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

The Bias of Crowds: How Implicit Bias Bridges Personal and Systemic Prejudice (2017, result): “Young children show levels of implicit bias similar to adults (e.g., Baron & Banaji, 2006; Dunham, Baron, & Banaji, 2006; Dunham, Chen, & Banaji, 2013; Heiphetz, Spelke, & Banaji, 2013; for reviews, see Baron, 2015; Dunham, Baron, & Banaji, 2008).”
Color Blind or Color Conscious? White American Mothers’ Approaches to Racial Socialization (2018, result): “The current study did not measure the children’s racial attitudes, but in light of past research showing expression of bias in children (e.g., Baron & Banaji, 2006; Doyle & Aboud, 1995; Vittrup & Holden, 2011), this perception may be inaccurate.”
Implicit Social Cognitions Predict Sex Differences in Math Engagement and Achievement (2011, methodology): “In particular, using child-friendly adaptations of the IAT (Baron & Banaji, 2006; Cvencek et al., 2010) will be particularly useful for furthering the investigation of the development of implicit social cognitions from early childhood through adulthood.”
Implicit (and explicit) racial attitudes barely changed during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and early presidency (2010, background): “…suggests that a single, prominent exemplar could be sufficient to eliminate a widespread implicit bias that emerges early in childhood (Baron & Banaji, 2006) and exists across every age, gender, racial and national group that has ever been investigated (Nosek, Smyth et al., 2007 –…”
Alief in Action (and Reaction) (2008, background): “48 For fascinating recent work on this issue, see Baron and Banaji, 2006 .”
A Developmental Science Approach to Reducing Prejudice and Social Exclusion: Intergroup Processes, Social‐Cognitive Development, and Moral Reasoning (2015, background): “Reducing Implicit Biases Developmental psychology research shows that children have implicit biases from an early age (Baron & Banaji, 2006; Cvencek, Greenwald, & Meltzoff, 2011; Rutland et al., 2005).”
Gender Identity and Stereotyping in Early and Middle Childhood (2010, background): “For example, some research has provided evidence that children can show different levels of explicit and implicit bias (Baron & Banaji, 2006; Rutland, Cameron, Milne, & McGeorge, 2005).”
Improving intergroup relations with extended and vicarious forms of indirect contact (2014, background): “In both studies, participants revealed implicit bias against Asians (measured with an Implicit Association Test, IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998); in contrast, explicit attitudes were positive or close to the midpoint of the response scale used.”
The rich—love them or hate them? Divergent implicit and explicit attitudes toward the wealthy (2017, background): “Baron and Banaji (2006) found that young White children had relatively negative attitudes toward Blacks both implicitly and explicitly, while older children had similar negative implicit racial biases but, presumably because of their recognition of egalitarian values, expressed less bias explicitly.”
Children and social groups: A developmental analysis of implicit consistency in Hispanic Americans (2007, methodology): “This is an important difference from our findings with majority populations, in which young children as well as adults show strong preference for their racial in-group (Baron & Banaji, 2006; Dunham et al., 2006).”