When Multiracial Individuals Are The Numerical Majority: Children'S Racial Attitudes In The Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is a uniquely valuable context in which to study children's racial stereotyping and prejudice, in part because multiracial individuals comprise the majority of the population and race is viewed largely as a continuous rather than dichotomous construct. In two studies, we use developmental and social theories to ground an exploration of Dominican children's racial biases. In studies 1 (n = 54; ages 6-11) and 2 (n = 122; ages 6-11), children were given measures of racial identity. preference, stereotyping, and/or status. As expected, children identified their own race in a manner consistent with others (e.g.. their teachers). Across a variety of tasks, children failed to consistently favor members of a specific racial group- as indicated by differing levels of racial stereotyping and associations of social status with different races. They did, however, sometimes systematically express greater liking of individuals of mixed racial heritage, a finding that was contingent on the modality of assessment (i.e.. whether race was framed as a continuous vs. dichotomous category, and measured via nonforced vs. forced-choice methods). Implications for current theories of racial attitude development are discussed.