Could babies start showing racist traits before they mumble their first word?
That’s the finding of two new studies out of the University of Toronto, published recently in the journal Child Development.
The first study had infants listen to either happy or sad music, and then look at pictures of adult faces. Infants between 6 and 9 months looked at faces of their own race for longer after listening to happy music, and faces of other races for longer after listening to sad music. It’s not clear why the infants made these associations.
In the second study, infants between 6 and 8 months watched videos of a woman looking at a corner of the TV screen. In some videos, the woman is gazing at an animal; in others, the animal appears in a different corner of the screen. The infants were more likely to follow the adult’s line of sight if she was of their own race, indicating that infants are more likely to learn from adults of their own race than adults of other races.
These aren’t the first studies to find that young children can show racial biases — a 2014 study found that 15-month-olds show preference to adults of their own race, the Daily Mail reported — but these findings indicate these biases begin earlier than previously thought as well as offer new reasoning behind the tendencies.
“When we consider why someone has a racial bias, we often think of negative experiences he or she may have had with other-race individuals,” study author Naiqi (Gabriel) Xiao said in a press release.
But the researchers say their findings show that babies may develop racial biases not because of negative experiences, but rather because of a lack of experience with people of other races. When babies interact only, or mostly, with members of their own race, they are shown to favor members of their own race.
Parents, the studies indicate, can help prevent destructive racial biases by exposing their children to a more diverse group of people.