Awareness of Ethnic Differences in Young Children: Proposals for a British Study

In the study of ethnic prejudice, psychologists have been specially interested in the components, the development and the determinants of prejudiced attitudes in the individual. For while historical, socio-cultural and situational factors shape the context in which the prejudice occurs, ’unless mores somehow enter the fibre of individual lives they are not effective agents, for it is only individuals who can feel antagonism and practise discrimination’.1 I Psychological investi-gations have been concerned, therefore, with the analysis of the conceptual and affective components of prejudice on the one hand; and on the other with the modes of acquisition of prejudiced attitudes and behaviour.-Since Lasker’s work, Race Attitudes in Children, was published in 1929,2 there have been remarkably few studies of ethnic awareness in very young children. Some results have emerged clearly, however: 1. Self-identification: As early as at age 3 or 4, an ethnic self