Award Date

5-1-2015

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Committee Member

Jennifer L. Rennels

Second Committee Member

Murray Millar

Third Committee Member

Erin Hannon

Fourth Committee Member

Tara Raines

Fifth Committee Member

Kathryn Hausbek-Korgan

Number of Pages

83

Abstract

The main goal of this study was to determine if race saliency affected responses on implicit measures of racial bias. Including racial labels in measures assessing implicit bias, particularly when presenting two racial groups vs. just one group, may inadvertently cue children that race is an important grouping variable and, in turn, increase the bias they display. We investigated 8- and 13-year old children’s performance on the affective priming task (APT), which does not use labels; the single category implicit association test (SCIAT) with Black faces and the SCIAT with White faces, each of which includes only one racial label; and the implicit association test (IAT), which contrasts two racial labels. Results supported the hypothesis that presenting two racial groups relative to one racial group increased bias. A secondary goal of this research was to examine relations between children’s bias on implicit and explicit racial bias tasks. Bias displayed on the implicit measures was unrelated, but bias displayed on an explicit task and the IAT was related, perhaps because both measures present two groups within the task. A final goal of this study was to examine whether the amount of other race friends or other race interactions was related to children’s implicit and explicit bias. The amount of other race interactions was unrelated, but the amount of other race friends negatively correlated with most of the racial bias measures; the more other race friends a child had, the lower their negative bias toward Black faces. These findings suggest that other race friendships are more predictive of bias than mere contact.

Keywords

Children; Implicit racial bias; Interracial friendship; Methodology; Psychological tests; Race discrimination

Disciplines

Child Psychology | Developmental Psychology | Psychology

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Download


Share

COinS