I’ve written previously about who we tend to instinctively believe can be creative in terms of age and gender, but a new study from New York University highlights how it can just as equally apply to race. What’s more, it’s a level of bias that emerges in early childhood.
The research builds upon previous work by the team that found that gender biases around creative brilliance kick in by the time we’re 6 years old, with girls less likely to associate brilliance with women by that age, and subsequently become less likely to engage in activities that are believed to require brilliance.
Does a similar phenomenon emerge with regards to race, and does the race of the individual whose views are being tested play a part? It’s a question the researchers believe rests at the heart of gender gaps in fields where intellectual talent is prized.
The brilliance gap
The researchers quizzed a few hundred 5 and 6 year olds from New York City to understand their assumptions about the intellectual abilities of both black and white men and women.
The children were each shown photos of pairs of adults in a natural setting, such as their home or office. The images consisted of a man and woman of the same race, with an equal number of black and white people shown to each child. The children were informed that one of the two was really smart, before being asked to guess which one it was.
The results suggest that, by and large, children thought white men were more likely to be brilliant than white women, with this consistent across ethnicity. Where things are doubly interesting however is how children felt about black men and women. When confronted with such images, the children tended to think that black women were more inclined to be brilliant than black men.
“Overall, these findings reinforce the conclusion that the gender-brilliance stereotype is acquired relatively early on in life, but they also suggest that this stereotype may ‘look’ different depending on the ethnicity of the women and men that children are reasoning about,” the researchers say.
