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Race matters to 3-month-olds, studies find

Feb. 12, 2006
Special to World Science

You should judge someone not by the color of his skin, civil-rights leader Martin Luther King declared 43 years ago, but by the content of his character.

Yet new research suggests that to achieve this ideal, you may have unlearn years’ worth of mental habits—a daunting number of years. Such as your current age, minus three months.


Babies often develop a preference for faces of members of their own race by the age of three months, a study has found.

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That’s because new studies have found that by this age—three months—many babies start to prefer faces of people from their own race to those of another race. This early favoritism may represent the first glimmers of racial prejudice, psychologists say.

But don’t start fretting about racist babies yet. On the bright side, researchers also found that babies raised with frequent exposure to people of other races don’t develop this early bias. This discovery may help guide future research on how to counter racism, they suggested.

“Early preferences for own-race faces may contribute to race-related biases later in life,” psychologists wrote in a paper on a study published in the February issue of the research journal Psychological Science. Typically, “by the age of 4 to 6 years, children already display racial stereotyping and prejudice in a variety of contexts.”

Two separate teams have published findings that three-month-old babies prefer faces of their own race: David J. Kelly of the University of Sheffield, U.K., and colleagues, whose findings appear in the November issue of the journal Developmental Science; and Yair Bar-Haim of Tel-Aviv University, Israel, and colleagues, authors of the Psychological Science report.

Bar-Haim’s team studied 36 infants from three groups: white babies raised among mainly white people in Israel; black infants similarly raised among their own people, in Africa; and black babies raised in a mixed black-and-white environment.

The researchers sat each baby on its mother’s lap and in front of a computer screen. Some clicking sounds and visual effects then appeared on the screens to draw the infants’ attention. Next, eight pairs of photos of black and white faces appeared onscreen, side by side, in succession.

The researchers analyzed whether the babies spent more time looking at the white or black faces. This is a standard sort of psychology test, they wrote; psychologists generally believe longer gazes at one face indicate preference for it. The researchers tried to match faces in each pair for attractiveness, so that this wouldn’t sway the young participants’ preferences.

White babies raised in white environments spent an average of 63 percent more time looking at white faces, the study found. Their African-raised counterparts spent 23 percent more time looking at faces from their own race than the other. Black babies raised in mixed-race environments spent roughly equal amounts of time looking at both types.

This suggests that “significant exposure to other-race faces can block the development of own-race preference,” Bar-Haim and colleagues wrote.

Kelly’s team found the preference for own-race faces doesn’t exist at one month of age, so it is not innate, they noted. They conducted a study similar to Bar-Haim’s, but tested only white babies, viewing photos of four different ethnic groups, at the ages of one and three months.

Many researchers in recent years have been interested in how racial prejudice develops, and even whether it might have evolutionary functions. Some have suggested prejudice may actually have been useful for primitive humans, by motivating them to protect their tribes from ill-intentioned strangers. “It was adaptive for our ancestors to be attuned to those outside the group who posed threats,” said Arizona State University social psychologist Steven Neuberg last year.

Unfortunately, he added, prejudice can also be turned against people who pose no threat. Today, mainstream Western societies tend to consider prejudice an unmitigated evil, a cause of social strife, injustice, and even—some studies have found—health problems, possibly caused by the continual stress of living on racism’s receiving end.

Research such as the baby study could help scientists understand ways to reduce racism, Bar-Heim’s team contends. For instance, they wrote, a key goal for future research would be to demark “the critical period during which early-formed preferences for own-race faces may be altered by exposure to other-race faces.”

SOURCE

It is entertaining how the assumption is made that there is race in the study. If they had fat parents and they tested to see if children identified more with chubby cheeks you think the results would be different? Comfort zone of parents looks is not racially based.

Plenty of other studies have shown when kids interact with other kids, they do not have racial preferences until later. Funny how they don't transpose the faces of their parents onto other kids by race.

It is based on early experience and exposure.

Discussion
Our primary aim was to find out whether the other-race effect is modifiable by novel experience that occurs during childhood after age 3. Adults of Korean origin adopted between ages 3 and 9 by White Caucasian families in Europe were examined. If the effect of early exposure to Asiatic faces was erased by later exposure to Caucasian faces, the pattern of performances of adoptees with Asiatic faces should be similar to Caucasian controls. Indeed, both the adoptees and the Caucasian controls were more accurate with Caucasian than with Asiatic faces. The results of both groups were indistinguishable and opposite to that of Korean controls who were more accurate with Asiatic than with Caucasian faces. This finding suggests that the effect of early visual experience may be erased as a result of immersion in a totally novel face environment.

Reversibility of the other-race effect in face recognition during childhood
S. Sangrigoli, C. Pallier, A.-M. Argenti, V.A.G.Ventureyra, and S. de Schonen.

i don't see why this researched was done... it is known that babies prefer faces of people they are used to. like this dude mention, what if the kid was adopted, the child would still prefer his parents' face over his own race which he doesn't know about anyway.

i think they should waste their money in ore meaningful studies.

Exactly!

I think you both missed the point of the study.

The point of the study was not to identify whether or not children develop racial prejudices, but rather to identify when racial prejudices are developed. In that way, as noted in the text, they are trying to develop strategies for combating racial prejudice before it develops. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

I mean, developing strategies for combating racism before it develops is not a waste of money, don't you think?

Garbage.

I agree.

Yuh THINK so???

would mind share why you FEEL that way??

I agree with Mystic, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but flashing pics in front of a 3-month old is not enough to combat racism, there is too much mental programming (for lack of a better term) out there by people they will come across in thier lives to rely on one study such as this, but it is a start.

IMO the best way to combat racism is to change our stink attitudes about people of other races and they do the same. even though this is a looooong shot. As Ghandi said; "Be the change you want to see in the world." We have to be that change we want to see.

*Exit, stage left*

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Well if that is so, then I will argue that they are looking in the wrong place. I strongly believe that racism has to do with nurture, not nature. Were the Greeks, Romans, who were known for their prejudices and xenophobia, or even Europe of the early medieval period necessarily racist? It does not appear so. To the contrary many legends and works of art – such as certain Grecian vases – strongly suggest that they almost had an obsession with dark-skinned people. It was (and to some extent still is) their benchmark of beauty. And there were substantial settlements of African and Asian people in Europe and the British Isles going back to primordial period giving rise to a number of names that are still with us. There were also at least two African emperors of Rome and three – possibly four – African popes in the Catholic Church.

Interestingly, there is some evidence however, that the racism of our time may have had its beginnings in a complex intertwining of the violent xenophobia of Germanic culture and the sacred myths of Zoroastrian Persia and its use of dark/light metaphor to symbolise evil and good respectively. This diffused to Xianity and Islam but did not become really manifest until the conflict between Catholic Europe and the Jews and between Catholicism and the Muslim Moors culminating with the expulsion of both in 1492.

That was also the period when Europe began to move westward to find independent trade links with Asia without having to deal with the Moors, finding new lands, conquering the indigenous people and using religion as a way of justifying the atrocities committed. It’s a kind of snowballing effect, so to speak. Religious bigotry mutating into racial bigotry.

Additionally, examinations of ethnic conflicts in Asia – i.e. Chinese vs Japanese; Japanese vs Koreans, Vietnamese vs Chinese – or in Africa (Hutu vs Tutsi) may also show the fallacies of the findings of such studies. I think they would be better utilising their time and money by looking at the cultural origins of racist ideas.

True, in alot of cases people should also change their attitudes about their own race.

I would agree with that. But the assumption thatthere is a race in the study just perpetuatesthe myth. If they addressed the factors involved. familiarity of phenotype, then people (like Vincypowa) would not assume these tests are a validation of the existence of race. You could grap any child and raise them with four parental figures representing the stereotype of the four supposed major races, and the child would not have any supposed racial preferences.

Not sure I agree with this. They did like using the contrast of light and dark,but not to define a phenotype.
Notice the contrasts in both these vaces are the same and even the features, but the people And there were substantial different skin color. But is it skin color or just the medium they are using?

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I highly doubt they were saying one person was light skinned and the others dark.
I would rely more on their writings. Like the Aethiopid which continues the story of Troy. They mention Memnon and the Aethiops as equals even though they describe them as darker people. There is no sense they are seen as anything other than allies or rivals.

Well genetically 1/3rd of European ancestry does come directly from Africa and 2/3rds from Asia, so that would make sense.

Don't get caught up in the origin of people as indication of phenotype. Rome had colonies in Northern Africa. Unless you have imagery that gives phenotype.
Septemius Severus, born in Africa

Pope St. Gelasius I, born in Africa


Don't know if that interpretation would hold weight. Greeks were also exposed to mythology from that time, In fact mithraism derives from it and was popular with the Greeks, but no racialism present at that time. Germanic culture was not xenophobic as much as it was defensive from invasion from the South.

I think racism as we know it had its beginnings much later especially in the confrontations between crusaders, and then the Moors. This would be followed by the antagonism with the Barbary states, etc.

Don't think it had to do with moving away from the Moors as much as reaction to being invaded by the Moors. The colonial Spaniards were calling all peoples moors in the new world and calling their temples mosques. A severe form of intolerance had developed. La reconquista in Spain had led to a religious and ethnic fervor that was intolerant. Abused child becomes abuser.

On this I agree.

That’s because new studies have found that by this age—three months—many babies start to prefer faces of people from their own race to those of another race. This early favoritism may represent the first glimmers of racial prejudice, psychologists say
these scientists are facking ass holes. Im not even reading past this first paragraph.

Babies like the faces that they are accustomed to.
It’s familiarity.
I cannot believe this study.
I aint reading no more.