A new study from a multi-university team of psychologists has found a link between the diversity of characters in White children’s favorite movies and television shows and those children’s racial biases.
The study authors recruited a sample of 600 White children, ages four to eight years old, to investigate the impact of content on racial attitudes. The authors asked the children’s parents to list their top three programs, resulting in a sample of 29 television shows and movies with 11,000 characters across more than 2,000 scenes. The authors then coded three aspects of racial representation within these shows and films: overall representation; low-, middle-, and high-status context representation; and high-status role of representation (i.e. characters with wealth and/or authority). White characters were overrepresented among the analyzed programs and children were overall more likely to watch programs with White characters than shows with Asian, Black, and Latine characters.
According to the authors’ analysis, children whose favorite media displayed a higher share of White characters relative to Black characters said they were less likely to play with a Black child and were less likely to have positive attitudes toward their Black peers. Furthermore, White children whose favorite programs had a higher share of White characters in high-status roles were more likely to attribute Black-White inequities to racial differences, rather than systemic reasons. Notably, character representation had no effects on White children’s attitudes toward other White children.
“Although experimental research suggests that media can causally shape children’s racial biases, it is also possible that children who hold racial biases are more likely to consume media that reflects those biases,” the authors write. “Indeed, the relationship between media consumption and racial biases is likely dynamic and self-perpetuating: Children who watch biased media develop more racial biases, which leads them to favor media that reflect and reinforce those biases. Our findings speak to the importance of breaking this cycle as early as possible.”
The study was led by Michael Rizzo, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, and scholars from New York University, the University of Connecticut, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
