Whom do I like more? Examining ethnic majority and minority children's socializing preferences in Hong Kong.

Children often attend to social group differences when making decisions. Here, we investigated group preferences among Hong Kong children: 115 Chinese children (M_age = 67.56 months, SD = 10.35 months; 52 girls, 63 boys) and 84 ethnic minority South Asian/Southeast Asian (or SA/SEA; M_age = 76.50 months, SD = 11.59 months; 42 girls, 42 boys). Participants were presented with an ethnic ingroup individual and an ethnic outgroup individual on a computer screen, indicating their preference for one individual over the other in the study. They were randomly assigned to one of two conditions, one in which their ethnic group member was portrayed as wealthy while the other individual was portrayed as poor, one in which their group member was poor while the other individual was wealthy. Chinese children preferred to socialize with the ethnic ingroup child over the ethnic outgroup child. By contrast, SA/SEA children preferred to socialize with ethnic outgroup individuals. For both groups of children, the wealth of the presented individuals impacted their preferences. These findings, drawn from Hong Kong where an ethnic majority group co-resides with several visible ethnic minority groups, provide insights about how group status as it intersects with ethnicity functions as a key mechanism in determining group preferences.

Duke Scholars

Author Sarah Elizabeth Gaither Psychology & Neuroscience