Examining Children’s Implicit Racial Attitudes Using Exemplar and Category-Based Measures

The goal of this research was to examine children’s implicit racial attitudes. Across three studies, a total of 359 White 5- to 12-year-olds completed child-friendly exemplar (Affective Priming Task; Affect Misattribution Procedure) and category-based (Implicit Association Test) implicit measures of racial attitudes. Younger children (5- to 8-year-olds) showed automatic ingroup positivity toward White child exemplars, whereas older children (9- to 12-year-olds) did not. Children also showed no evidence of automatic negativity toward Black exemplars, despite demonstrating consistent pro-White versus Black bias on the category-based measure. Together, the results suggest that (a) implicit ingroup and outgroup attitudes can follow distinct developmental trajectories, and (b) the spontaneous activation of implicit intergroup attitudes can depend on the salience of race.