Resumen de Race Salience and Essentialist Thinking in Racial Stereotype Development

Kristin Pauker, Nalini Ambady, Evan P. Apfelbaum

• The authors explored the emergence and antecedents of racial stereotyping in 89 children ages 3–10 years. Children completed a number of matching and sorting tasks, including a measure designed to assess their knowledge and application of both positive and negative in-group and out-group stereotypes. Results indicate that children start to apply stereotypes to the out-group starting around 6 years of age. Controlling for a number of factors, 2 predictors contributed significantly toward uniquely explaining the use of these stereotypes: race salience (i.e., seeing and organizing by race) and essentialist thinking (i.e., believing that race cannot change). These results provide insight into how and when real-world interventions aimed at altering the acquisition of racial stereotypes may be implemented.