How Colorblind and Structural Messages Affect Children's Reasoning About Novel Group Disparities.

ABSTRACT: Children experience a variety of messages about racial-ethnic socialization from their parents, teachers, and other sources, who might not answer children's questions about race, or might explicitly promote the idea that race does not matter. However, how such messages affect children's reasoning about disparities, including whether children attribute disparities to intrinsic differences between groups, remains unclear. We contrast the effects of hearing common messages, such as no explanation and colorblindness, with the effects of hearing a structural explanation, which highlights a typical cause of such disparities. Here, we examine the impact of these messages by exposing 7- to 10-year-olds (n = 90) to a scripted parent-child conversation about an achievement disparity between novel gr

SUBMITTER: Zhang MY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12672972 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature