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Published online 12 April 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.176

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Children who form no racial stereotypes found

Brain disorder eradicates ethnic but not gender bias.

Janelle Weaver

Children without Williams syndrome form stereotypes about ethnic groups.US Army
Prejudice may seem inescapable, but scientists now report the first group of people who seem not to form racial stereotypes.

Children with a neurodevelopmental disorder called Williams syndrome (WS) are overly friendly because they do not fear strangers. Now, a study shows that these children also do not develop negative attitudes about other ethnic groups, even though they show patterns of gender stereotyping found in other children. "This is the first evidence that different forms of stereotypes are biologically dissociable," says Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, director of the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, who led the study published today in Current Biology¹.

Adults with WS show abnormal activity in a brain structure called the amygdala, which is involved in responding to social threats and triggering unconscious negative emotional reactions to other races²^,³. Racial bias has been tied to fear: adults are more likely to associate negative objects and events, such as electric shocks, with people of other ethnic groups compared with those of their own group⁴. But according to Meyer-Lindenberg, his latest study offers the strongest evidence so far that social fear leads to racial stereotyping.

Show no fear
The team showed 18 pictures to 20 children with and 20 without WS, all of whom were of white European origin. Then they asked the children, aged 5-16 years, to choose individuals in the drawings who might engage in sex-specific activities, such as playing with dolls. Both groups of children showed the same patterns of gender stereotyping.

Children in the study were asked to associate characters in stories to pictures of dark- and light-skinned people.Williams, J.E., Best, D.L., and Boswell, D.A. Child Dev. (1975)