Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
These studies investigate the influence of adults' explicit attention to commonalities of appearance on children's preference for individuals resembling themselves. Three findings emerged: (1) An adult's identification of two dolls' respective similarity to and difference from the child led 3-year-olds to prefer the similar doll (study 1, n = 32). (2) When the adult did not comment on similarity, children age 6 years but not younger preferred physically similar individuals (study 2, n = 68), suggesting that a spontaneous preference for physically similar others does not emerge before school age. (3) Four- but not 3-year-olds generalized an adult's pedagogical cues about similarity, leading them to prefer a self-resembling doll in a new context (study 3, n = 80). These findings collectively suggest that the preference for individuals resembling ourselves develops through a process of internalizing adults' attention to, and messages about, similarities of appearance.
Jordan et al. (Fri,) studied this question.