The Impact of Vicarious Exposure to Diversity on Preschooler's Emerging Ethnic/Racial Attitudes

Children at a preschool in the United States had their ethnic/racial awareness and attitudes assessed prior to and after the completion of a four month long cultural exchange program between their school and one in Japan. In comparison to a control group, participants in the exchange showed an increase in ethnic/racial awareness and own‐group bias after the program's completion. However, own‐group bias was not related to negative evaluations of Japanese when attitudes toward Japanese were assessed independently of children's own group attitudes. Thus, while participants in the program displayed a significant increase in own‐group bias on a forced‐choice attitude assessment, their post intervention evaluation of Japanese on an independent measure of ethnic/racial attitudes remained stable, and like their pre intervention scores on this measure, significantly more positive than expected by chance. The findings suggest that (1) teaching preschoolers about an ethnic/racial out‐group raises their awareness of their own group membership, (2) increasing children's investment in their own group does not automatically translate into their disparagement of out‐groups, and (3) influencing preschooler's out‐group attitudes is not easily done.