"The relations of White parents’ implicit racial attitudes to their children’s differential empathic concern toward White and Black victims"

Professor Gustavo Carlo (pictured right) published an article with colleagues in the Journal of Experimental Psychology assessing the association between parents’ implicit racial attitudes and their children’s sympathetic bias.
 
The title of the article is “The relations of White parents’ implicit racial attitudes to their children’s differential empathic concern toward White and Black victims.”
 
Co-authors are Wen Wang (first author, Arizona State University), Professor Tracy L. Spinrad (Arizona State University), Director of Research and Evaluation Diana E. Gal-Szaboa (Arizona State University Indigo Center), Professor Deborah Laible (Lehigh University), Postdoctoral Scholar Sonya Xinyue Xiao (Arizona State University), Graduate Teaching Associate Jingyi Xu (Arizona State University), Research Scientist Rebecca Berger (Arizona State University), and Regents Professor Nancy Eisenberg (Arizona State University).
 
Carlo’s primary research interest focuses on understanding positive social development and health in culturally diverse children and adolescents. Many of his projects focus on U.S. ethnic/racial groups, including Latino/a youth and families. He has published more than 200 books, chapters, and research papers. He currently serves as a member of the Society for Research in Child Development Governing Council, as associate editor of the International Journal of Behavioral Development, and as co-editor of the upcoming APA Handbook of Adolescent Development.

​Abstract
 
The goal of this study was to investigate the relations between White parents’ implicit racial attitudes and their children’s racially based bias in empathic concern toward White and Black victims of injustice as well as the moderating role of children’s age in this relation. Children aged 5–9 years (N = 190) reported how sorry (i.e., sympathy) and nervous (i.e., personal distress) they felt after watching sympathy-inducing videos in which either a White (non-Hispanic) child or a Black child was teased by peers. Participants’ primary caregivers (mostly mothers) completed a computerized Implicit Association Test to assess their implicit racial attitudes. Parents’ implicit race bias was associated with their children’s reported sympathy toward Black victims and their sympathetic bias (i.e., relative sympathy toward White vs. Black victims); however, results were moderated by children’s age. Specifically, parents with higher implicit race bias tended to have children with lower levels of sympathy toward Black victims for younger children and higher levels of sympathetic bias for younger and average-aged children but not for older children. Older children tended to report relatively high levels of sympathy toward Black victims and low levels of sympathetic bias regardless of their parents’ implicit attitudes. The importance of parents’ implicit attitudes in understanding young children’s race-based moral emotional responses and the implications for intervention work are discussed.