Racial Awareness and Bias Begin Early: Developmental Entry Points, Challenges, and a Call to Action

The investigation of EFL teachers' cognitive emotion regulation, pedagogical beliefs, pedagogical practices, and their engagement across the curriculum

This study investigates the relationship between Chinese EFL teachers' emotion regulation, teachers' pedagogical beliefs, pedagogical practices, and their engagement. A total of 516 English teachers from diverse universities in Jiangsu Province participated in the survey, with demographic data revealing a balanced representation of gender and age groups, as well as varied teaching experience. The instruments employed included the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), Teacher Engagement Scale, Teachers' Pedagogical Beliefs Survey, and Classroom Practices Survey, all assessed for reliability and validity. Analysis utilized SPSS software (version 27) and AMOS (version 24), employing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to scrutinize the data. The findings demonstrate a significant correlation between teachers' engagement and emotion regulation, pedagogical beliefs, and practices, explaining approximately 57 % of the variation observed across subjects. This highlights the crucial role of these factors in shaping teachers' engagement and underscores the importance of addressing them holistically to enhance educational outcomes.

Toward characterization of perceptual specialization for faces in Multiracial contexts

This conceptual analysis focuses on opportunities to advance research and current hypotheses of perceptual development by examining what is presently known and unknown about perceptual specialization in a Multiracial context during the first year of life. The impact of being raised in a Multiracial family or community is discussed to further characterize the development of perceptual expertise for faces and languages. Historical and present-day challenges faced by researchers in defining what race is, identifying Multiracial individuals or contexts, and how to study perceptual and cognitive processes in this population are discussed. We propose to leverage current data from developmental Multilingual populations as a guide for future research questions and hypotheses characterizing perceptual specialization based on face race for Multiracial/Multiethnic individuals and contexts. Variability of input and the pattern of specialization are two factors identified from the developmental Multilingual literature that are likely useful for studying Multiracial contexts and development. Several methodological considerations are proposed in hopes of facilitating research questions and practices that are reflective of and informed by the diversity of experiences and social complexities within Multiracial populations.

State of the Science on Racial Microaggressions

Despite racism being widespread and research evidence of racial disparities growing, those who lack the lived experience of racial oppression often find it difficult to acknowledge this specific phenomena due to in-group bias and social learning, among other reasons. The devaluing of this research topic within psychology and greater scientific skepticism around the construct continues to undermine research on racism and microaggressions. The science of microaggressions has advanced significantly in conceptual and theoretical clarity over the last 15 years. Many initial assumptions about the nature of microaggressions have since been found to be incorrect. This state of the science review addresses these concerns by reviewing the concept, validated measures, physical and mental health impacts, critiques and misinformation, recommended strategies and interventions, and clinical implications. We propose future research directions to help advance the scientific study of racial microaggressions.

Providing antiracist cognitive-behavioral therapy: Guidelines, tools, and tips

This article addresses gaps in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) when it comes to integrating racial issues that affect racialized patients' mental health. Traditional adaptations of CBT focused on social, religious, and linguistic challenges but neglected the critical aspects of interpersonal, institutional and systemic racism, internalized racism and complex racial trauma. This oversight has resulted in less effective outcomes for racialized individuals. The article proposes clear, applicable guidelines for clinicians to provide anti-racist CBT interventions. They cover clinical self-development, re-design the CBT triangular (thoughts, feelings, behaviors) theoretical framework, provide practical tools and tips to facilitate antiracist CBT interventions. Clinicians are encouraged to engage in self-assessment to understand their own racial biases and develop competencies to address racial issues and dynamics in therapy. CBT theoretical framework is re-envisioned to include environmental factors that impact the lives of racialized people, acknowledging the pervasive effects of racism on mental and physical health. The article also highlights the importance of creating a culturally safe therapeutic environment for racialized children, adolescents, and families, and emphasizes the need for specialized training to effectively serve these groups. The proposed guidelines aim to transform CBT practice, increase confidence of racialized individuals in mental health care, and ultimately decolonize CBT interventions.

How can white parents raise anti-racist children? Introducing the routes to effective anti-racist parenting (REAP) model

In response to highly publicized instances of overt racial injustice, there has been a recent resurgence of interest and commitment to identifying processes through which anti-racist behaviors develop among White individuals. One particularly important context in which anti-racist behaviors can develop is within families and as a result of childrearing. Theories of anti-racism typically neglect the role of families and family science research typically neglects a focus on anti-racist parenting outcomes. To further research and applied work on fostering anti-racism within White families, this paper introduces a new integrative model called routes to effective anti-racist parenting (REAP). The model draws on theories from various fields, including family science and social psychology, and uses a metaphor of nurturing a plant to explain the nuanced, multi-faceted approaches to anti-racist parenting. The model incorporates factors related to the "pot" (i.e., fundamental values and structure necessary to contain more specific anti-racist skills and behaviors), "soil" (i.e., characteristics that define anti-racist commitment), "seeds" (i.e., direct transmission of anti-racism skills), and "environment" (i.e., influential external factors). Finally, we describe the intended benefits that can be reaped from this intentional approach to anti-racist parenting. The REAP model contributes to the family science literature by providing an empirically grounded theoretical model describing the roles that parents can play in children's anti-racist development.

Quantifying Bias in Hierarchical Category Systems

Categorization is ubiquitous in human cognition and society, and shapes how we perceive and understand the world. Because categories reflect the needs and perspectives of their creators, no category system is entirely objective, and inbuilt biases can have harmful social consequences. Here we propose methods for measuring biases in hierarchical systems of categories, a common form of category organization with multiple levels of abstraction. We illustrate these methods by quantifying the extent to which library classification systems are biased in favour of western concepts and male authors. We analyze a large library data set including more than 3 million books organized into thousands of categories, and find that categories related to religion show greater western bias than do categories related to literature or history, and that books written by men are distributed more broadly across library classification systems than are books written by women. We also find that the Dewey Decimal Classification shows a greater level of bias than does the Library of Congress Classification. Although we focus on library classification as a case study, our methods are general, and can be used to measure biases in both natural and institutional category systems across a range of domains.

Children's social wariness toward a different-race stranger relates to individual differences in temperament

When children first meet a stranger, there is great variation in how much they will approach and engage with the stranger. While individual differences in this type of behavior-called social wariness-are well-documented in temperament research, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the social groups (such as race) of the stranger and how these characteristics might influence children's social wariness. In contrast, research on children's social bias and interracial friendships rarely examines individual differences in temperament and how temperament might influence cross-group interactions. The current study bridges the gap across these different fields of research by examining whether the racial group of an unfamiliar peer or adult moderates the association between temperament and the social wariness that children display. Utilizing a longitudinal dataset that collected multiple measurements of children's temperament and behaviors (including parent-reported shyness and social wariness toward unfamiliar adults and peers) across early childhood, we found that 2- to 7-year-old children with high parent-reported shyness showed greater social wariness toward a different-race stranger compared to a same-race stranger, whereas children with low parent-reported shyness did not. These results point to the importance of considering racial group membership in temperament research and the potential role that temperament might play in children's cross-race interactions. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Previous research on temperament has not considered how the race of strangers could influence children's social wariness. We find evidence that 2- to 7-year-old children with high parent-reported shyness show greater social wariness toward a different-race stranger compared to a same-race stranger. These results point to the importance of considering racial group membership in temperament research. Our findings also suggest temperament may play a role in children's cross-race interactions.

Actual and symbolic prisons, Black men, and the freedom-unfreedom paradox: interrogating the bad faith of racialized oppression in a post-accountable United States

Drawing on systemic racism theory, white racial framing and the notion of bad faith as the connecting, justifying thread between ideals of freedom and equality and actions realizing unfreedom and inequities, this essay explores the alchemy of race, masculinity, and racialized oppression and its consequences for Black men past and present in United States society. This essay's aim is to trace the historical ideologies and cultural practices, relations, and normative standards that have contributed to, and hence must be challenged to confront, the inequitable, race-based relations of power, and privilege at the root of institutionalized injustices. To do so, this essay interrogates the dissonance of bad faith as a corrective mode of truth telling to highlight and tap the equity potential of Black men's collective, historical rejections of the White mainstream's conflicting definitions and deceptive reasonings requisite for pushing toward racial justice, healing, and peace.

Community diversity and the other-race effect in infancy

The other-race effect (ORE) is characterized by processing advantages for faces of one's own race over faces of another race and is observed at ~9 months of age. Environmental exposure to other races has an impact on the development of the ORE. In the current study, we examined the effects of community racial diversity on the ORE in 9- to 12-month-olds from across the United States. We hypothesized that community racial diversity would influence the amount of experience that infants have with individuals of other races and be an important factor in predicting the ORE across broad regions of the United States. We predicted that infants from more diverse communities would demonstrate successful processing of own- and other-race faces, while infants from less diverse communities would demonstrate successful processing of own-race but not other-race faces. This would indicate that the ORE is exhibited more strongly in infants from less diverse communities than in infants from more diverse communities. Participants completed familiarization and visual paired comparison (VPC) trials with own- and other-race faces in an online study. Our results showed that although the ORE was present, the effect was driven by community members who were the racial majority. Recognition biases were not observed in community racial or ethnic minority participants, potentially due to increased exposure to racial out-group members, which mitigated the development of the ORE in this subset of participants. This study has far-reaching implications in the study of infant face perception, child development, and social justice, as the ORE develops at a young age, and may lead to a complex pattern of racial biases contributing to systemic barriers in society.

The WEIRD Microcosm of Microaggression Research: Toward a Cultural-Psychological Approach

Microaggression research has made great strides over the past decade while steadily pushing itself into mainstream psychological science. Yet the field remains firmly situated within the Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) cultural context. Correspondingly, recurring criticisms against the validity of microaggressions are often rooted in individualist, decontextualized understandings of behavior, and critics' rebuttals are often grounded in a philosophical and reflective understanding of the cultural context. In this article, I put forward that (a) the enactments and appraisals of microaggressions are the behavioral results of the cognitive salience of cultural schemas; (b) cultural schemas are informed by cultural ideologies, underlining their methodological and empirical relevance for future research; and (c) cultures are dynamic by highlighting the effects of geopolitical events on the content of cultural schemas that may moderate the perception and enactment of microaggressions. For these reasons, I argue that a cultural psychology of microaggressions may help to depathologize the individual by situating behavior in its cultural context while at the same time necessitating the inclusion of communities residing in non-WEIRD societies.

Racism and censorship in the editorial and peer review process

Psychology aims to capture the diversity of our human experience, yet racial inequity ensures only specific experiences are studied, peer-reviewed, and eventually published. Despite recent publications on racial bias in research topics, study samples, academic teams, and publication trends, bias in the peer review process remains largely unexamined. Drawing on compelling case study examples from APA and other leading international journals, this article proposes key mechanisms underlying racial bias and censorship in the editorial and peer review process, including bias in reviewer selection, devaluing racialized expertise, censorship of critical perspectives, minimal consideration of harm to racialized people, and the publication of unscientific and racist studies. The field of psychology needs more diverse researchers, perspectives, and topics to reach its full potential and meet the mental health needs of communities of colour. Several recommendations are called for to ensure the APA can centre racial equity throughout the editorial and review process.

The developmental trajectories of racial categorization and explicit racial biases in Singapore

The present study investigated the development of racial categorization and explicit racial biases in Singaporean Chinese preschoolers (N = 73). Three- to six-year-olds were found to be generally adept at categorizing novel faces by race and displayed significant improvements in their racial categorization abilities at six years old. Additionally, the strength of children's racial preferences varied along the developmental trajectory. While three- and four-year-olds did not exhibit own-race preferences, five- and six-year-olds preferred to befriend own-race children and preferentially assigned desirable jobs to own-race adults. None of the age groups, however, displayed preferences for either race when assigning undesirable jobs to adults, pointing to an absence of negative outgroup bias from three to six years old. Lastly, children who were better able to categorize novel faces by race also showed stronger tendencies to assign undesirable jobs to other-race adults and thus stronger outgroup negativity. Together, our findings suggest that ingroup positivity precedes outgroup negativity, and that racial categorization plays an important role in the development of negative outgroup bias, hence providing further support for developmental theories on intergroup bias formation.

The developmental trajectories of racial and gender intergroup bias in 5- to 10-year-old children: The impact of general psychological tendencies, contextual factors, and individual propensities

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.

Individuating multiple (not one) persons reduces implicit racial bias

Individuation training that helps humans see multiple other-race targets as distinct rather than as interchangeable can reduce children’s implicit racial bias in the form of more negative other-race associations than own-race associations. However, little is known about which aspects of these interventions are critical for their effectiveness. The present research examines whether children need to learn to differentiate among multiple other-race individuals for these interventions to reduce their level of implicit racial bias, or whether differentiating a single other-race individual is sufficient. We addressed this question among 4-to-6-year-old Chinese children (N = 66, 31 girls) who engaged in coordinated movement with Black instructors for 2 min. There were two between-subject conditions: in a differentiation condition, there were four different Black instructors, and children had to learn to tell them apart, and in a no-differentiation condition, there was only one Black instructor. Implicit bias was measured using the IRBT, an implicit association test that was developed based on the IAT but is appropriate for young children. We found a reduction in implicit bias against Black people after this interaction in the differentiation condition, but not in the no-differentiation condition. These findings suggest that learning to differentiate among multiple other-race individuals plays a critical role in reducing children’s implicit racial bias.

Intersection between social inequality and emotion regulation on emerging adult cannabis use

Emerging adulthood (EA; ages 18-25) is characterized by socioemotional and neurodevelopmental challenges. Cannabis is a widely used substance among EAs, and hazardous use may increase risk for sustained use patterns and related health consequences. Research shows differential increases in hazardous use by objective as well as subjective measures of social inequality, with more concerning trajectories for youth with greater experiences of social inequality. Learning how to flexibly monitor and modify emotions in proactive ways (i.e., emotion regulation) is a central developmental task navigated during the EA window. Challenges to and with emotion regulation processes can contribute to the emergence of mental health symptoms during EA, including hazardous cannabis use. In this perspective, we highlight emotion dysregulation and social inequality as two critical factors that interact to either buffer against or exacerbate cannabis use during the EA period, noting critical gaps in the literature that merit additional research. We recommend novel methods and longitudinal designs to help clarify how dynamic cognition-emotion interplay predicts trajectories of negative emotional experiences and cannabis use in EA.

The Traumatizing Impact of Racism in Canadians of Colour

Purpose of Review

While research has identified racial trauma in other contexts, it is often overlooked amongst Canadian society. Racial trauma occurs as a result of an event of racism or cumulative events over time whereby an individual experiences stress and consequent mental health sequelae. Given that the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and/or Person of Colour) population in Canada is increasing, it is imperative to identify racial discrimination and the subsequent stress and trauma associated with being racialized in Canada, which subjects BIPOC Canadians to various forms of racism, including microaggressions.

Recent Findings

This paper reviews the published literature on racism and racial discrimination that identifies or infers racial trauma as the source of the mental health implications for various groups (e.g., Indigenous people, Black Canadians, Asian Canadians, immigrants, and refugees). In addition, intersectionality of racialized persons is prominent to their psychological well-being as their psychosocial and socioeconomic position are complex. Therefore, this paper both provides insight into the Canadian experience as a person of colour and signifies the need for further research on racial trauma in a Canadian context.

Summary

Despite Canada’s emphasis on multiculturalism, racialized individuals are at risk for racial trauma due to prejudice and discrimination. The politicization of multiculturalism has permitted Canada to deny claims of racism, yet the historical basis of established institutions results in irrefutable systemic and systematic barriers for Canadian people of colour.

Racial Microaggressions: Critical Questions, State of the Science, and New Directions

Racial microaggressions are an insidious form of racism with devastating mental-health outcomes, but the concept has not been embraced by all scholars. This article provides an overview of new scholarship on racial microaggressions from an array of diverse scholars in psychology, education, and philosophy, with a focus on new ways to define, conceptualize, and categorize racial microaggressions. Racism, along with its many forms and manifestations, is defined and clarified, drawing attention to the linkages between racial microaggressions and systemic racism. Importantly, the developmental entry points leading to the inception of racial bias in children are discussed. Theoretical issues are explored, including the measurement of intersectional microaggressions and the power dynamics underpinning arguments designed to discredit the nature of racial microaggressions. Also described are the very real harms caused by racial microaggressions, with new frameworks for measurement and intervention. These articles reorient the field to this pertinent and pervasive problem and pave the way for action-based responses and interventions. The next step in the research must be to develop interventions to remedy the harms caused by microaggressions on victims. Further, psychology must make a fervent effort to root out racism that prevents scholarship on these topics from advancing.