Racism and intergroup discrimination are pervasive problems in human societies. Whereas several studies have shown that children show bias in the context of many kinds of groups, much less is known about how and when general psychological tendencies and contextual factors contribute to the manifestation of intergroup bias across development, and whether individual differences play a role. In the present study, we pursue these questions by investigating and comparing the developmental trajectories of intergroup bias in 5- to 10-year-old (mostly) White children (n = 100). We assessed children's liking and preferences towards 4 racial groups (White, East Asian, Black, and Middle Eastern) and towards 2 gender groups (male and female) in a within-subject design. We found that the young children in our sample showed a significant racial and gender ingroup bias, speaking to an early and strong manifestation of intergroup bias on the basic ingroup-outgroup distinction. This bias decreased with age. At the same time, we found considerable differences between the different types of outgroups from early on. Furthermore, there were remarkable differences between the developmental trajectories of gender and racial intergroup bias, highlighting the role of both social and contextual influences. Finally, our results did not reveal consistent evidence for the influence of individual differences on children's intergroup bias.

种族主义和群体间歧视是人类社会普遍存在的问题。尽管有几项研究表明，儿童在多种群体的背景下表现出偏见，但对于一般心理倾向和背景因素如何以及何时促成跨发展的群体间偏见的表现，以及个体差异是否起作用，我们知之甚少。在本研究中，我们通过调查和比较 5 至 10 岁（主要是）白人儿童（n = 100)。我们在受试者内设计中评估了儿童对 4 个种族群体（白人、东亚人、黑人和中东人）和 2 个性别群体（男性和女性）的喜好和偏好。我们发现，我们样本中的幼儿表现出明显的种族和性别内群体偏见，这表明在基本的内群体-外群体区别上，群体间偏见的早期和强烈表现。这种偏见随着年龄的增长而减少。同时，我们从一开始就发现不同类型的外群之间存在相当大的差异。此外，性别和种族间群体偏见的发展轨迹之间存在显着差异，突出了社会和背景影响的作用。最后，我们的结果并未揭示个体差异对儿童的影响的一致证据。