The Effects Of Evaluative Conditioning Training On Children's Racial Attitudes

Racial attitudes have been a hot research topic in psychology.Existing research has made great achievements,but there are still some problems.First,the study of implicit racial attitudes is constrained by its tools.Second,the appropriateness and effectiveness of interventions in reducing negative racial attitudes in young children is unknown.Third,existing research focuses on the Western societies,mostly exploring the attitudes of the White people towards Black people,leaving it less known for nonWestern countries.So,the generalization and cross-cultural applicability of the current conclusions need to be discussed.In order to make up for the shortcomings of the existing studies,this study focused on exploring the ethnic attitudes among Chinese children towards other ethnic groups(the Black and White people)in the context of non-Western society,as well as the effects of evaluative conditioning training on reducing negative racial attitudes using a “pretest-training-posttest” design.Experiment 1 explored the development of the ethnic attitudes of Chinese Children aged 4 to 6 towards Black people and the effects of evaluative conditioning training on reducing negative racial attitudes.Chinese children's racial attitudes toward Black were measured by the Preschool Friendly Implicit Association Test(PSF-IAT).Children's explicit racial attitudes were measured through three tasks: The Forced-choice Task,the Trait Attribution Task,and the Accept Gifts Tasks.After the pretest of children's implicit and explicit racial attitudes,a five-day evaluative conditioning training was conducted to reduce the negative racial attitudes.Two post-tests were conducted: The first one immediately after the Day 1 training and the second one day after the five-day training.Results showed that Chinese children had negative explicit and implicit racial attitudes against Black.After the evaluative conditioning training,compared with the control group,children in the experimental training condition significantly reduced negative implicit racial attitudes in the second posttest;however,their negative explicit racial attitudes were not reduced in the two posttests.Experiment 2 further explored the development of the ethnic attitudes of Chinese Children aged 5 to 6 towards another racial group: White people,and the effects of the same evaluative conditioning training.The results showed that Chinese children had negative explicit and implicit attitudes against White.After the evaluative conditioning training,compared with the control group,there was no reduction of negative explicit racial attitudes in the two posttest;however,negative implicit attitudes in the experimental group were significantly reduced in the first posttest and the decrease of negative implicit attitudes was marginal significance in the second posttest.Taken together,two experiments consistently found that Chinese children had negative explicit and implicit attitudes against people from other racial groups,and that evaluative conditioning training reduced the level of negative implicit attitudes in children.In theory,this study enriches the existing theories of social attitudes and implicit social cognition,and provides research evidence from non-Western countries.Practically speaking,this study provides a new intervention method for racial attitudes and has profound significances for children's cross-racial and cross-cultural communication...