Parental and peer influences on children's racial attitudes

Two studies examined the hypothesis that children acquire racial attitudes from parents and friends. In the first study, the attitudes of third-grade White children, mean age 9 years, were measured with the Preschool Racial Attitude Measure and with the Multi-response Racial Attitude Measure; the children also predicted the attitudes of their parents on the latter. The perceptual differentiation within-race was assessed. Mothers completed the Katz-Hass attitude scale and the Linville differentiation measure. The results showed that, although children predicted parental attitudes to be similar to their own, the actual parent-child correlation was nonsignificant. However, the mother's differentiation was inversely related to her child's bias score on the PRAM. In the second study, children once again predicted friends' attitudes to be similar to their own. However, only one of several indices of attitude yielded a significant subject-friend correlation, also one subject-non-friend correlation was significantly positive. In each case, the correlations were moderate (between .35 and .40). Thus, there is little support for the widespread assumption that children acquire their racial attitudes from parents and friends. However, parents might indirectly influence their child's attitudes through their view of outgroup members as homogeneous or heterogeneous. Explanations for the children's expectations of similarity to parents and friends are offered. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.