Department of Psychology, University of York, UK.
Dev Sci. 2018 Mar;21(2). doi: 10.1111/desc.12539. Epub 2017 Feb 21.
We investigated when young children first dehumanize outgroups. Across two studies, 5- and 6-year-olds were asked to rate how human they thought a set of ambiguous doll-human face morphs were. We manipulated whether these faces belonged to their gender in- or gender outgroup (Study 1) and to a geographically based in- or outgroup (Study 2). In both studies, the tendency to perceive outgroup faces as less human relative to ingroup faces increased with age. Explicit ingroup preference, in contrast, was present even in the youngest children and remained stable across age. These results demonstrate that children dehumanize outgroup members from relatively early in development and suggest that the tendency to do so may be partially distinguishable from intergroup preference. This research has important implications for our understanding of children's perception of humanness and the origins of intergroup bias.
我们研究了幼儿何时开始将外群体非人化。在两项研究中，我们要求 5 岁和 6 岁的儿童对一组模糊的玩偶-人脸混合体的人性程度进行评价。我们操纵这些面孔属于他们的性别内群体还是性别外群体（研究 1），以及属于地理上的内群体还是外群体（研究 2）。在两项研究中，与内群体面孔相比，将外群体面孔视为不那么人性化的倾向随着年龄的增长而增加。相比之下，明确的内群体偏好即使在最小的儿童中也存在，并且在整个年龄段都保持稳定。这些结果表明，儿童从相对较早的发展阶段就开始将外群体成员非人化，并且这种倾向可能部分与群体间偏好区分开来。这项研究对外群体偏见的起源和儿童对人性的感知的理解具有重要意义。
