Consequences of ‘minimal’ group affiliations in children
Three experiments with 140 five-year-olds in total tested whether randomly assigned groups were enough to produce intergroup bias. Without information about group status or competition, children showed in-group preferences on explicit and implicit attitude measures, resource allocation, behavioural attribution and expectations of reciprocity. Preferences persisted when groups were not labelled with a noun. Children also preferentially encoded positive information about in-group members, which distorted the information they received. Reading depth: abstract only; the figure 140 is the abstract's total N.
Three experiments with 140 five-year-olds in total tested whether randomly assigned groups were enough to produce intergroup bias. Without information about group status or competition, children showed in-group preferences on explicit and implicit attitude measures, resource allocation, behavioural attribution and expectations of reciprocity. Preferences persisted when groups were not labelled with a noun. Children also preferentially encoded positive information about in-group members, which distorted the information they received. Reading depth: abstract only; the figure 140 is the abstract's total N.
Written from the abstract, Crossref record, 2026-11-01.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Dunham, Y., Baron, A. S., & Carey, S. (2011). Consequences of ‘minimal’ group affiliations in children. Child Development, 82(3), 793-811. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01577.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01577.x