Adults delay conversations about race because they underestimate children’s processing of race

This research summary can be incorporated into a lecture or shared with students as a reading to demonstrate how psychological science explores the diversity of human experience. This resource can also be used to encourage students to identify the major components of a research study (i.e., the hypothesis or study question, sample, method, and findings). Students can be asked to identify potential limitations of the study and encouraged to discuss the implications for our understanding of human behavior. Keywords highlight how concepts within and across pillars are incorporated into a single research study.

This research group hypothesized that adults may avoid talking to children about race because they underestimate young children’s capacity to process and reason about this concept. In an online study with a nationally representative sample, researchers asked American adults when they believed children first develop cognitive abilities for understanding and processing race. Specifically, they asked people for the age—in months—at which children notice people’s race and prefer faces of particular racial groups. The researchers found that—just like Piaget—people tended to underestimate children’s cognitive capacities. Over 90% of the participants believed children’s capacity to understand and process race-related information emerges later in development than it actually does. The researchers also asked participants at what age they would talk to children about race. The respondents tended to think conversations about race should occur when children were about 5 years old (and there were no differences in such beliefs based on participants’ race, gender, or education). On a more encouraging note, participants who were given accurate information about children’s developmental abilities then shifted their responses accordingly, saying that conversations about race should occur about a year earlier (at about age 4). These findings suggest that conversations about race should happen earlier than they actually do, especially since children’s schemas about the world develop very early (so correcting misperceptions early on, before they get more fixed, is important).

Sullivan, J., Wilton, L., & Apfelbaum, E. P. (2021). Adults delay conversations about race because they underestimate children’s processing of race. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(2), 395–400. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000851opens in new window

Race, Development, Language, Learning, Cognition, Race

The development of resources to broaden diversity and representation in the teaching of high school psychology resources is an APA Committee of Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools initiative supported by funding from the American Psychological Foundation David and Carol Myers Fund. This resource was developed by Eric Castro, Shawn C.T. Jones, PhD, Allyn Olsen, and Catherine Sanderson, PhD.