Ann McGillicuddy-DeLisi Publishes Breakthrough Research on Aversive Racism in Child Development

Breakthrough research published in the July/August issue of Child Development by Ann McGillicuddy-DeLisi, Metzgar Professor of Psychology, provides a first look at the age when children begin to take race into account subconsciously when making decisions about justice.

“Children’s Distributive Justice Judgments: Aversive Racism in Euro-American Children?” has been featured in various news outlets in the U.S. and abroad, including Medical News Today, EurekAlert, Newstrack, Post Chronicle, United Press International, Washington Times Insider, and Science Daily.

Along with psychology graduates Melissa Daly ’01 and Angela Neal ’01, McGillicuddy-DeLisi extended classroom lessons on adults who display aversive, or unconscious racism, to explore how race may affect children’s judgments about fairness. Daly and Neal collected much of the data. McGillicuddy-DeLisi notes there was no developmental research literature addressing possible aversive racism in reasoning about distributive justice when the team began its study.

“It is difficult to assess these implicit biases in the reasoning of children and adults since they appear to believe that they are egalitarian,” she explains. “It is unlikely that their behavior will change since they view themselves as fair.”

McGillicuddy-DeLisi, Daly, and Neal studied the reactions of Euro-American second-and-fourth-graders to stories about three characters who receive a windfall reward from the sale of their artwork. Pictures accompanying the stories depicted either all white characters or two white children and one black child. The researchers asked participants to divide the reward money among the story characters, who varied in individual characteristics such as age, level of productivity, and financial need. The team also asked the children to justify their decisions and judge the fairness of patterns representing four justice principles.

They found that the older children in the study, with an average age of 9.82 years, allocated more prize money to black productive characters than white counterparts. They also awarded more to white needy characters than black needy children. McGillicuddy-DeLisi notes these findings are consistent with aversive racism theory. Older participants tended to give more equity-based justifications, in which rewards were tied to the amount produced, for black characters than white characters. Fairness ratings of patterns for the justice principles revealed effects for age and character race. In their published article, the researchers also discuss implications for understanding the developmental course of moral judgments as they apply to racial differences.

“The findings that younger children [second graders with an average age of 7.67 years] were steadfastly committed to principles of equality in their allocations to the three characters, their justifications for those allocations, and their ratings of the fairness of patterns based on principles of equality, equity, and benevolence, suggest that this might be the best time to emphasize social justice reasoning tasks that include consideration of race,” says McGillicuddy-DeLisi. “By fourth grade, when children have advanced cognitively and are capable of considering multiple factors in their decisions, children may have already a more subtle and implicit approach to race that affects their reasoning about social justice.”

Studies with adult subjects have uncovered a subtle, complex form of prejudice different from more explicit forms. Studies of children’s attitudes about race have reported that children understand concepts of racial differences in the preschool years, followed by an increase in prejudice between the ages of five and seven. Prejudice stabilizes or declines through the early to middle elementary school grades, but the prejudice pertaining to previous childhood studies focuses on an overt, hostile form of racism presumed to be different from implicit racism.

There has been one published study examining children’s implicit racism through a reaction time measure in which participants responded to pairs of pictures of black and white and positive and negative words. The study of nonverbal behavior supports the assumption of the unconscious and automatic basis of aversive racism in adults.

McGillicuddy-DeLisi has researched the development of children’s reasoning about social justice for years. In 1994, she published a paper in Child Development on children’s reasoning about social justice issues with Andrew Vinchur, associate professor and head of psychology, and psychology graduate Cynthia Watkins ’92.

In related studies, she advised the honors thesis research of psychology and Spanish graduate Rebecca Banchik ’05, who examined whether students making healthcare decisions might evidence an aversive anti-Semitism that contrasts with hostile anti-Semitism. This year, she is in the early stages of research with psychology majors Lia Mandaglio ’08(Annandale, N.J.) and Lauren Steinitz ’08 (Mercer Island, Wash.) to extend Banchik’s thesis to compare considerations of healthcare benefits for Jewish patients versus those for white and black patients.

McGillicuddy-DeLisi is co-editor of Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. As a developmental psychologist, her research is focused on the development of spatial and mathematical knowledge in children, and the influence of family environment factors on the development of children and adults. Institutions such as the U.S. Office of Education, National Institute of Mental Health, and National Institute of Health have awarded her grants totaling more than $1 million. She has given presentations at more than 25 conferences, edited two books, and authored or coauthored over 40 book chapters and journal articles. She is a past recipient of the Marquis Distinguished Teaching Award, Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Award for superior teaching and scholarship, Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture Award, and Student Government Superior Teaching Award.