Intergroup bias of primary school students in South Korea: a study of racial attitudes, perceptions of similarity, and friendship potential

Racial intergroup bias refers to favouring one’s own racial group while derogating members of a different race. Childhood is considered the optimal time to prevent biases that can instigate discrimination and racial conflict, which has thus led to considerable attention on the development of children’s racial intergroup bias. The aim of this study was to explore the three domains of intergroup bias, namely racial attitudes, ethnic categorization, and cross-race peer relations in South Korean children. Furthermore, the study explored how children’s perceptions of similarity are played out in children’s intergroup bias. 82 children in first and third grade were recruited from five provinces of South Korea.
To explore the development of intergroup bias and the ways in which perceptions of similarity affect children’s bias, the present study adopted two existing measures but expanded upon these measures in various ways: Multi-Response Racial Attitude Measure to measure children’s racial attitude and the Similarity Task to measure children’s ethnic categorization and cross-race peer relations. For a comprehensive understanding on children’s bias, a mixed-method research design was employed. Quantitative analysis revealed that children hold different attitudes toward different racial groups and that children attend to multiple sources of similarity when categorizing peers and judging the friendship potential of peer dyads. Qualitative analysis not only supported such findings as similar patterns of themes were identified but also found children’s developmental sophistication implied in their responses.
The findings suggest that children can clearly see the difference between racial groups and exhibit bias. However, a closer look into their similarity perceptions revealed that though children focused on racial features when judging peers, they also paid attention to other sources of similarity such as hobby and language in those judgments. That is, dyads that shared hobby or language were judged to be more similar and more likely to be friends than the dyads that did not share hobby or language. Particularly, in some cases, same hobby or same language conditions were more important than race in their similarity judgment. Likewise, in their friendship potential judgment, children judged different race dyads who spoke the same language as more likely to be friends than same race dyads that did not speak the same language. These findings pointed to a new direction that education policies of Korea should take in order to promote interracial peer relationships.
The present study was the first to examine the perceptions of similarity in Korean children’s bias and thus made an important initial step. Future studies should continue identifying other powerful sources of similarity that could downplay racial differences between racial groups and explore diverse components of bias to understand the multifaceted layers of bias.

Keywords: Intergroup bias
CDE
Prejudice
Online interviews
Racial
Mixed methods research
CDE2021
Friendship
South Korea
Perceptions of similarity
Attitudes
Advisor: Nag, S