Sylvia Perry is a social psychologist and Associate Professor at Northwestern University, where she directs the Social Cognition and Social Identity Lab. She studies the psychological mechanisms that shape how people recognize and confront their own biases, as well as how those biases are transmitted across generations.
We talk about her research on racial socialization, specifically focusing on how white parents navigate—or frequently avoid—conversations about race with their children. Sylvia shares insights from her research on facilitating parent-child discussions about race and racism. We discuss why color-conscious messaging is more effective than “colorblind” approaches at reducing children’s implicit biases and how addressing subtle microaggressions can be more impactful for a child’s development than discussing overt prejudice alone.
Along the way, we explore the privilege underlying the freedom to opt out of these difficult conversations and offer practical takeaways for parents looking to foster empathy and a sense of fairness in their own homes.
Transcript
Note that this transcript was generated with AI assistance and has not been thoroughly checked for accuracy.
Andy Luttrell: I have to imagine you get asked all the time, like, okay, what do we do in my family? And I’m sure the answer is very easy and straightforward.
Sylvia Perry: Yeah, it’s funny actually, because, you know, you know, you probably know that like a lot of my earlier work was more social cognitive and, you know, implicit social cognition. Kind of stuff, you know, versus racism and implicit biases and bias awareness. And, you know, like, basically, my work sort of looked at, like, you know, how do people sort of— do people hold these biases? And do they recognize them? And how does that shape confrontation? And how do people, like, third-party people perceive individuals who do or do not confront their own biases, and so forth. So it was, you know, more like experimental, like traditional experimental social psychology. And so when I I would give talks, like, that’s how the Q&A went, right? Like, this method or this theory or this approach or, you know, some sort of criticism of the method or whatever. And then when I started giving talks on, you know, this work about racial socialization, I almost like, I felt this insecurity because like, people would be like, so this happened with my daughter, you know, or whatever. And I’d be like, they’re not asking like, you know, theoretical questions. Like, it’s not very empirical. And they’d be like, Is the quality of work just like not good? Or is it like, you know, because the idea is that people ask critical questions of your work, you know, and they sort of, it becomes very generative, and they might push back against something. And then there’s a conversation around, like, you know, the research and the methodology and the theory. But instead, it became like these very sort of personal conversations, not to say there weren’t like, you know, methodological ones and so forth. So yeah, that was like a big surprise for me when I started this work, it was such a huge shift. And so yes, I get asked these questions all the time. And I think that sort of along the same lines of being a social psychologist and how we often approach the world because we are experimentalists, you know, for the most part, you know, it was really difficult for me to extrapolate from the data without what I found to be enough evidence. You know, like, oh, I haven’t done this 2×2, or I haven’t done this part of the experiment, or I haven’t tested this question. You know, so you could like look to prior theory and say like, well, given what we know about XYZ, like, here’s what I would anticipate, despite the fact that I haven’t tested that. But when it comes to something like racial socialization, especially among white parents, when I first started back in 2015, I mean, the literature was like really sparse. Right? And I was trying to sort of extrapolate from what I knew about intergroup relations and the little bit I knew about development. But I’d be like, well, you know, we just don’t know yet, you know, or whatever. And it was like when I started doing like interviews, like NPR or whatever, that I could see that like, the hosts were a little bit frustrated. Like, just like, you’re more of an expert than the people who are listening, like, just tell us what you know. Like, it’s okay to go beyond like the data, you know, and to like say something beyond that. So I guess I say that to say like, yes, I get those questions all the time. And over the last 10 years, I’ve gotten more comfortable. I mean, collected more data, but also become more comfortable with like thinking about how do children work, how do parents and children work together, and like, what do we know about like, you know, parent-child relationships, and how might that inform, or even just my experiences inform like what I might share with parents.
Andy Luttrell: I kind of get the sense, I haven’t read the original work, but I get the sense that some of that early work was kind of descriptive and laying the groundwork of like, we don’t even really know what’s happening in people’s homes. So like we gotta go ask people and see what’s up.
Sylvia Perry: Yeah, that’s right. So, you know, like there was an inkling of it in terms of like, we knew from like Kristin Pocher and Evan Applebaum’s work and others that white children tended to around 8 not be comfortable with pointing out race. And like the Guess Who kind of experiment they did where it’s like, even if this would help you and it would take fewer tries in the game, like kids were like, I don’t want to describe the race of that person, right? And for me too, being interested in bias awareness, like, I did some work when I was a postdoc, when I was sort of doing some work both in Jack Tavideo’s lab, but also Christina Olson’s lab, where I asked children, like, I tried to take my bias awareness questions and like, make them more kid-friendly, and see if they, you know, sort of felt that like, they might have some biases that they didn’t want to have. And I also looked at like a self and other, like how much are you biased versus like how much do you think other people might do this thing? And already I was seeing these discrepancies, right, where kids were like, yeah, I think sometimes I do this. This was like 7 to 12-year-olds, I think. But like, I think other people probably have these biases more, right? Like not as much as like I have less. And so, yeah, you know, from that time I was like, you know, where is this stuff coming from? Right? If kids already know, I’m not supposed to mention race, or like, I’m gonna say other people probably have these, you know, subtle biases more than I do from that young of an age. It just sort of, you know, just from like a, you know, social norms, like social influence kind of perspective, I was like, this has to be not only coming from the environment, but from parents as well. But we like, we know very little about how frequently that might be and like what the content might be of those conversations. And so, yeah, with my colleague Jamie Abide at the University of Vermont, we started this journey because she studied how parents and children have difficult conversations broadly. And for example, like, if you have emerging adults who are starting college, and you bring them into the lab with the parent, and they discuss something that’s contentious, like how much they use their smartphone or whatever, how does that affect the kid’s physiology? How does the parent’s behavior, whether they’re trying to be controlling, control the narrative, whatever, shape the kid’s physiology? And then how does that predict how the kid copes with stress over the course of college, right? So those were the kinds of questions that she was interested in. And so we were sort of mutually interested in similar questions. And so she’s like, we should start doing some work around whether the same kind of thing of parents trying to control the narrative or not wanting to freely discuss race and whatever, what that looks like. So that’s how it got started. Yeah, totally. And we both had our own expertise. Right? Had a lot of expertise and like thinking about sort of the levers that might inform, you know, whether parents were open to discussing difficult things or wanted to control the narrative and things like that. You know, I had, you know, information about like motivations behind why someone might say they’re not prejudiced or whether people are more flexible to say that they hold prejudice and was sort of thinking about that in a similar kind of way. Oh, like, I really personally want to control the narrative about who I am. Right. And then that’s also going to shape maybe how I talk to my child. Right. Which is one of the reasons why, like, I think our very first paper was like bias awareness predicting, you know, these conversations, like, you know, versus motivation to respond without prejudice, external, internal, and so forth, not versus, like looking at all these things. And yeah, sort of thinking similarly, like they’re probably comfortable with, like, sharing that with their kid too and being open to that versus somebody who’s like, oh no, no, I’m not prejudiced, right? Like, you know, but it’s like, because I don’t want other people to know, right? It’s like the same thing can be happening with your child where you want to control that and don’t want that information to leak out. You fear, you know, how that might impact your relationship and so forth. So yeah.
Andy Luttrell: Is that your sense of, from those data of where kids are reticent, white kids are reticent to point out race in a Guess Who type of game? Do we have a clear sense? Like, does it seem like something like that colorblind motivation is stemming from this kind of socialization process?
Sylvia Perry: Oh yes, yes. So, um, in terms of like actually developing preferences, I think the evidence in the literature suggests that that can sort of come from parents and their environment, right? Like Becky Bigler’s work, for example, really talks about, you know, this kind of top-down process where it’s like, you know, “Good morning, girls and boys,” right? Just like kids from a very young age starting to recognize that people are being categorized. And then it’s sort of like stereotypes start to be applied. And then there are just subtle things that kids notice in their environment. It might be like just sort of implicit, or it might be sort of overt messages about differences, right? But from like a very young age, kids, you know, because they’re learning and trying to make connections and patterns, right? They start to pick up on this. And so, you know, the idea is that this is all around them anyway, right? So from their peers, from their, you know, their teachers, because there’s evidence that teachers’ colorblind messaging can influence children’s like colorblind preferences. But like parents have to kind of disrupt that, right? Like if they just sort of continue down that road of like, oh, we’re not going to talk about it. And if I don’t say anything, my kid’s not going to be prejudiced. There’s no way to disrupt what’s sort of naturally happening in the world where there are hierarchies, right? There are sort of social groups that are associated with more positivity versus negativity or more certain social roles versus others. And so, you know, this can both be coming from parenting, just these messages about certain groups and stereotypes and so forth. But also parents have the possibility of disrupting that if they like address it head on. Like, hey, you might notice that, you know, girls, you know, do this and boys do this. But I just want to let you know that like anyone can do that. Like, it’s not like the only girls or only boys can do that. Right. For example, yeah, so I think I’m kind of answering what you’re asking.
Andy Luttrell: Yeah, and I wonder if this is just also an opportunity to kind of pull back and give a state of the, just, I don’t know, the state of what, the state of parenting, like in terms of what you see different families tending to do or not to, like what are the different kind of varieties of parent-kid discourse surrounding race and how does it differ from one family to another?
Sylvia Perry: Yeah, yeah. So what we tend to see in others in the literature is about a third or a little over a third of white parents are saying they’re having conversations about race and racism with their children. And we’ve looked at this question for, you know, middle childhood, so roughly 8 to 12. We’ve also looked at it in earlier adolescence, so 13 to 17. And so, you know, only about a third saying they do it at all. And then when we get into this third, it depends on the sample, but we find sort of a mix where a good percentage, if not like a majority of parents are using what we call colorblind messaging. So just either downplaying racism, like, oh, like, you know, things have gotten better, you know, it’s not really that way anymore. Or saying, suggesting that like race is just not a thing. Like, oh, like we’re all the same, you know, and just— and it’s not even like treat everyone like we should treat everyone the same even though people, you know, they— this doesn’t happen. Like, oh, you know, we’re all God’s children, you know, we’re all part of the human race. And so that’s a common way that parents who do talk might do it. And another way that they might do it that is sort of more beneficial to children is sort of confronting the reality of racism. So like even something as minimal as like notice that your child noticing race and saying like, yes, like that, you know, you probably are noticing that some people have more melanin than others, you know, some people look a little differently than others. And like, you know, here’s why. All the way to like, you know, Black kids are treated differently, you know, than white kids simply because of the color of their skin. And somebody might assume that they’re a troublemaker or that they’re going to grow up to be a criminal or they live in this place or whatever. You know, obviously also like if something comes up directly engaging with that. So those are sort of ways that white parents tend to approach it. And it’s very much from a place of like our group is sort of hierarchically, you know, like we have more power and we hold more power in the US in terms of like, you know, our privileges and our access to resources and so forth. And so much of the conversation from white parents is shaped around preventing their kid from becoming prejudiced, right? Like the sort of implicit knowledge that like either people might think we’re racist and I need to let you know that like that’s not a thing or whatever, I need to keep you from becoming racist, or sort of a motivation of like, I want my child to be an ally. Like, I want them to be anti-racist, right? Like, not just to not be prejudiced, but also to make sure they’re an ally for people of color who might experience prejudice. So those are sort of some of the ways that like more dominant groups might talk about, you know, socialization. And then in terms of racial minorities, so a lot of work in particular has been done with Black American families, it’s more of a protective mechanism. So it might involve really early on, like 3 or 4, just talking about, like, you should be proud and okay with being Black. Like, Black is beautiful. And it’s not like anti-white. It’s more like trying to counter the narrative in society that, like, your skin isn’t as beautiful, your features aren’t as beautiful, your culture, you know, isn’t as well respected. And that’s sort of meant to buffer self-esteem and to increase, you know, racial identity and racial pride in their children with the understanding that like by 8, their kids are probably going to face some form of discrimination, like to actively hear a child, often a white child, you know, obviously other children as well, say something racist to them, right? So they’re, they’re like preparing them. They’re sort of teaching them to have pride in who they are. But there’s also a form of preparation for bias. So that tends to start a little bit later in early childhood. So maybe 6, 7, 8, going up, you know, there’s sort of a preparation for bias, right? Like you might face discrimination or this might happen to you. And I want to let you know that this doesn’t have anything to do with you, right? That the world is prejudiced and people might treat you this way. And then there’s sort of another form that might happen where parents are sort of attempting to protect their children, but framing the world is like a scary place. And this, you know, this is a group to be disliked and this is a group to fear and so forth. And so you can imagine that these things might take sort of different forms in terms of how they shape the outcomes. Of the children. So on the white kid side, the more color conscious, you know, is what we call when parents are being more direct, is gonna be, you know, beneficial in terms of there’s evidence that kids are more open to confronting racism, that they better understand the history of racism, and that might increase their empathy toward outgroup members. Whereas more colorblind messaging, you know, it’s gonna sort of be the opposite effect, right? That it’s gonna have this ironic effect kids might actually develop more prejudice and be less empathetic and less able to recognize prejudice when it occurs. And then in terms of families of color, this sort of racial pride preparation for bias is going to help buffer self-esteem and prepare them for experiences of discrimination. Whereas the form of preparation that’s more about like the world is a scary place and, you know, these are people to be avoided, can unintentionally actually sometimes lead to, you know, more negative outcomes and like fear about experiences when it comes to interracial interactions. So that’s a, that’s a bit of a summary, right? But, and also just to, you know, it’s probably clear, but like, one side is like, I don’t want you to be prejudiced, you know, and the other side is more like, I want to protect you from what you may experience in the world.
Andy Luttrell: It always strikes me that this, that distinction is a useful example of what we really mean by privilege, right? Like, I think people get the sense that privilege is, you know, it’s mistaken for like, oh, like some people have it easy and they’re just like, people are dumping money on you. Is that what you— that can’t be what, uh, the reality is. But what it really is meant to mean is like, well, there are some families who have this additional burden of having to like navigate with their kids these kinds of questions and other families who, I mean, can choose to opt in or out, right? And like, that’s what the privilege is that we’re talking about. Does that, does that resonate? Does that seem right to you too?
Sylvia Perry: Absolutely. Because if you’re thinking like only a third of white parents are even talking, right? And you got like a good 70%, 65 to 70% who are like, just chilling, just moving through the world, living our lives, right? And then of the 30 who are, you know, it’s like, ah, No big deal. Everybody’s the same. You know, there’s just a small percentage of people who are doing that difficult work because it is uncomfortable, right? Like, like parents experience anxiety and discomfort around it. Children, you know, might experience some discomfort and anxiety around learning this difficult information. But like, the way we talk about it is it’s, it’s no different than talking to your child about any difficult subject, right? About death, Parents have to talk to their kids about COVID you know, about, you know, any form of bullying, right? Like if your kid’s a bully or whatever, and you have to kind of sit them down and be like, hey, you were kind of enabled, you know, you’re kind of like rude to that other kid. And like, you’re embarrassed, you know, like, how do I deal with this? And so there are lots of different things that parents have to talk to their children about that quite uncomfortable and difficult. But in it, like, it, it’s one of those things where it’s like you have to say to yourself, okay, this isn’t about me. It makes me uncomfortable, but here are the potential long-term benefits of me having this conversation now. When they trust me in this, like, you know, relationship that, you know, where there’s this connectedness, like them learning this from me and being able to ask questions, be curious as opposed to me taking my hands off of it and just saying like, oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine, right? Whereas like you said, a lot of parents of color, although there also are parents of color, you know, in our research we found like it’s sort of an 80/20 and there’s other research that shows different things in terms of parents of color having these conversations, you know, but for them it’s uncomfortable too, right? But they’re like, I have to do this. Like, out of protection of my child, like harm may happen, right? And so that sort of, you know, pull of like, this is something I have to do despite the fact that I know it’s going to be uncomfortable because I have to protect my child versus like an inconvenience maybe for some other parents. So, you know, when we ask parents like, why aren’t you talking? They’re like, it just hasn’t come up, you know, it’s not really relevant to us. Or they might say like, I just think they’re too young to hear about something so stressful. Right? When like, meanwhile, like, you know, 3, 4, 5, you know, Black children may be experiencing these forms of discrimination. 8, Like it’s really getting bad, you know, and in our sample, parents of kids from 8 to 12 are saying like, they’re too, a plurality are saying they’re just too young for that.
Andy Luttrell: It seems too, if I, if I read right, that even among the minority of white parents who are engaging in these conversations, they are often fairly superficial too. Like, if the world demands that I talk about this with my kid, like, I’ll do the bare minimum to just be like, oh, there’s the, there’s this thing that people are concerned about, but like, don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal. And like, that counts as talking about it presumably, right, in that number?
Sylvia Perry: Yeah, yeah. And, and like that’s better than nothing. You know, like, like, it’s not, you know, we would argue it’s not enough, but like, that’s better than nothing. And so even in our research, when people say sometimes like, well, like, you didn’t have them talk about systemic racism, and you know, you didn’t, you know, explicitly tell them, it’s like, yeah, but like, surprisingly, even if they just have any form of color-conscious conversation, right, where they just point out prejudice when they see it, and, you know, they can, they sort of attribute it to the child engaging in this behavior and so forth. Like, even that, in the context of when a parent isn’t doing it the best way, right, it’s more beneficial than like avoiding it altogether, because like it’s giving kids some information, some signal, um, you know. And, and then when completely absent. They just— whatever’s happening around here, that’s, that’s what I’m soaking up and learning.
Andy Luttrell: Do we— I’ve become interested recently in how parents’ values kind of seep out into how they, like, kind of try to convey those values to kids. Um, and so I’m curious, when it comes to white parents and the sort of decision they make about how to talk about things like race, whether it’s in a more colorblind or color-conscious way, does that Do we have evidence that that maps on pretty clearly to their own worldview? Like, I would suspect that some of this is parents who go like, well, I know that I don’t want to appear prejudiced by even mentioning race. So like, I’m then going to tell my kid like, oh, we don’t, we don’t even point out this thing about people. Yeah. Do we have, do we have evidence that there’s a connection there or we can assume that there is?
Sylvia Perry: Yeah. So we do. So in some of our work, so we did this interesting study where we looked at two cohorts. Parents before and after the murder of George Floyd. And these two cohorts, so these were adolescents, so 13 to 17, the parents of adolescents. And we asked them about whether they had these conversations and whether they had talked about some of the, you know, police killings recently and the Black Lives Matter movement and so forth. And before the murder of George Floyd, We saw, um, you know, the same percentage, right, about a third or so talking. After, it went up to like 80%, right, or something like this. But when we looked at the codes, a couple things were happening. One, when we looked at the people who said they were talking and we removed the people who had little information to provide, like, we talked, you know, the percentages weren’t actually very different. Right? So it’s like, oh, there’s this sort of performative thing where it’s like, oh, we’re supposed to say now, post-George Floyd, that we’re talking about race because this is a thing. You ask me what I said and I can’t actually provide you with any details, right? At the same time, we found things to be more polarizing. So we actually saw like more evidence of parents saying really racist and harmful stuff after the murder of George Floyd. So, you know, the numbers spiked after that. So at the same time as there being these people who are like motivated to say they were talking, you know, we were finding these parents who were saying like, you know, it’s actually the Black people, you know, who are harming the police and like they’re the problem. And if they would just do XYZ, then, you know, they would be fine. You know, it’s Black on Black crime, you know, You know, the typical sort of like arguments. And not surprisingly, I don’t know, maybe some people would say surprisingly, political ideology was aligned with that, right? So people who were more politically conservative were more likely to be telling their children these kinds of messages. And we found sort of, obviously, you know, it is more negatively correlated with you know, being more liberal. And then the same thing of like, who’s talking about race and so forth, we’re seeing that, you know, more liberal people are doing that. So like, that’s one sort of, you know, piece of information. And then in our other study, where we were looking at middle childhood, we found that bias awareness, so this sort of I’m reflecting on my own biases and admitting that I may have these subtle biases, right? Like when I’m around Black people, I may experience sort of being uncomfortable even though I don’t want to, so forth. That was positively associated with not only talking, but also talking in a color-conscious way and being less likely to deny and downplay racism. And we also found that internal motivations were associated. So if it’s personally important to me to be non-prejudiced, then that was predictive of me talking about race, talking in a color-conscious way, and less likely to downplay. And we found the reverse with external motivations. But interestingly, we did not find a correlation between the feelings thermometer and interracial anxiety. So these more sort of overt forms of prejudice or discomfort around Black people and talking, it was really motivation and one’s own personal awareness that were predicting whether they were talking and the kind of conversation. So we do find that in the majority of our samples, both our prolific samples, we did Qualtrics panels, I brought people into the lab, much like what you might find on these platforms and in the greater Chicago area, the North Shore, an overwhelming majority of people were more liberal, right? Like, and so I suppose it shouldn’t be super surprising that like, you know, feelings thermometer is not predicting this because, you know, people might be motivated, right, to downplay like their more explicit preferences or biases relative to maybe other groups. So yeah, that’s, that’s some of the information we found in terms of ideology. And I think the most evidence we have in terms of like personal concern and awareness, right, is the bias awareness effect.
Andy Luttrell: Do you, speaking of the samples, do you, is that, that 30% figure, does it seem like that’s coming from a sample that has the same sort of concern that it’s a more liberal-leaning estimate, or is that like a pretty representative percentage?
Sylvia Perry: I can say that in the samples that we’ve had, and again, like, for example, even our adolescent sample, which I— parent sample, which I think may have been Qualtrics panels— we tend to find, like, in my lab setting, it was like 80%, but like, we tend to find maybe 60-70% of people, I believe, are more liberal leaning. And so, like, it’s, you know, it’s more difficult to say, I guess, whether conservatives would show, you know, similar kinds of numbers, or it would be bigger. Like, well, I mean, I guess if you’re looking at our sample, given that conservatism is associated with being more likely to downplay racism and to use this overtly racist language, that we, you know, would likely find that a good chunk of that 30% are people who would be more left-leaning. But at the same time, I don’t think we have any evidence looking at samples across different researchers that liberals are particularly likely to use color-conscious language or whatever. They might be more likely to say they’re talking, right? Because they know that’s the thing to do. But it’s not like a good percentage of them are using color-conscious language. I’m not sure if that makes sense. But yeah.
Andy Luttrell: Yeah, so that’s a good road into, like we’ve been talking about like what is happening on the ground, but we just kind of look at what’s happening. But is there, what can be done to better the conversations that parents are having with kids, in particular promoting this color-conscious approach, which seems, I think you’ve hinted at it like that is the more optimal solution. Before your data came along, did we know that that was the case? That color conscious has these demonstrable benefits?
Sylvia Perry: No. Well, okay. So there are a few, there are only a handful of studies. So I mean, obviously, like I said, there’s the work with Kristin Popper, Evan Applebaum, that basically is showing that in terms of judgment and decision making, right, that this kids having sort of this more colorblind tendency. It’s going to disrupt their willingness to be accurate. And they’re so motivated to not talk about race that it’s going to affect whether they make these accurate judgments. But there’s other work that came along later that basically what they did was they experimentally manipulated in a classroom whether the teachers were talking about the history of racism versus not in their sample. And they looked at whether white children showed differences in terms of, you know, how they explained and understood prejudice. And so I kind of hinted at some of this work earlier, but, and that they were the ones who found this, this benefit in terms of, you know, recognizing prejudice, greater empathy, and so forth. And so that was one of the only experimental studies that we were familiar with, where, you know, they were sort of looking at this, but it wasn’t about parenting, right. And so when we sort of started down this road, you know, in 2015 or so forth, there, you know, there were a lot of researchers who were sort of coming along and saying like, well, people are saying color-conscious language should be used, but like, We don’t have a lot of evidence that this is beneficial. So we’re not saying parents shouldn’t talk to their kids. We’re just saying we don’t know if this method is beneficial, right? And the argument that we were making is even though we don’t know the extent to which color-conscious messaging is beneficial, all the evidence that we do have out there suggests that colorblind messaging has negative effects, right? Like, like, that, that’s like pretty consistent across the developmental literature and the adult literature. And the little bit of work we do have on color-conscious messaging does not show any evidence of negative effects. And at the same time, you know, other evidence on parenting suggests that like, kids can tell when their parents are holding back and not being honest, you know, and that this affects the relationship and it can cause discomfort and anxiety in the child. And so, you know, there’s sort of other socialization literature suggesting that like being straightforward, being honest, talking to your kids about these difficult topics, like it’s to the benefit of the child in the relationship, right? And so we have a study that we published in Developmental Psychology in 2024 which is a dyadic study where we brought parents and kids into the lab and we created a methodology to sort of facilitate and encourage them to have color-conscious conversations. So we have these animated videos that we created where Black and white children are interacting with one another in the videos. These videos were informed by a Summers and Norton paper where they basically asked laypeople, like, what are examples of racism? And then they sort of categorized it into, like, historical systemic racism, blatant, you know, overt, and then more subtle. So we took these subtle and blatant examples, and we made them sort of kid-appropriate. So a white child feels uncomfortable around a Black child, a Black child— a white child loses their pencil, they assume the Black child took it and they’re a troublemaker. So instead of they’re a criminal, right, like, you know, And so the kids and parents watch these videos, and then we provide them with these prompts that they can use that are informed by like what the literature suggests, like color-conscious kinds of conversations and positive intergroup relations related things should be. So, you know, did the white child do something wrong? Like, how did it make the Black child feel? How would you feel if you were the Black child? Why do you think the white child did what they did? So like empathy, perspective-taking, making appropriate attributions for the behavior that happened. And then finally, do you think something prejudiced occurred, right? So really more explicitly having them engage in this color-conscious language. And we measured children’s and parents’ implicit biases. And, you know, because we’ve seen in the literature with Kristin Olson and others that this is like something that’s particularly— can be predictive for children in terms of their behaviors. And at this age, 8 to 12, kids don’t want to express things in an overt way, right? And so we found that when parents use color-conscious language, that their kids showed a bigger decrease, right, in their implicit biases relative to not. And we also found we didn’t find a reverse, we found a dampened effect if parents use colorblind language, or if they made sort of external attributions, like, oh, something else explains why the white child did what they did, right. But we found that an overwhelming majority, like over 90% of parents and kids use color-conscious language in the conversation. And so what we argue is that even though sometimes they were using colorblind language, or making external attributions. It’s in the context of them tending to, for the majority of the conversation, use color-conscious language. So even if they’re not doing it right all the time, it’s beneficial, right? So we find this effect for what they say. We also find that if parents are showing signals of concern while talking, that this predicts reductions. And if parents are showing physiological evidence of sort of active engagement during the conversation that there are these bigger reductions. But importantly, one thing we find that I think is really interesting is that these effects are largest when they’re discussing more subtle forms of racism. So the parent who will confront and feel uncomfortable around something really overt, you know, a white child intentionally kicks a ball at a Black child because they don’t like Black children, that’s less beneficial to a child than a parent who, when there’s evidence that a white child feels uncomfortable when they sit next to a Black child, or that, um, they kind of think that Black children look the same in their classroom and they get them mixed up, um, or like they assume when they lose their pencil that it was their classmate, you know, these are more subtle things, um, that when a parent pushes back on that and shows more concern about that that their kids benefit the most from the conversation. And I can just tell you from an example that I observed, like, what this kind of looks like is a kid, when it was more overt, saying, yeah, that’s, that’s definitely racist. Yeah, that’s prejudiced, right? And then it would get to like the pencil fell and they assumed, and the kid would say, well, they didn’t like intentionally do anything mean to them, or, you know, that’s like and maybe it was kind of a mistake. And then the parent would say, well, how would you feel if somebody thought you were a troublemaker? They just assumed that because of your race, you know, when you didn’t do anything wrong. And the kid’s like, oh, like, I would feel really sad if that happened. And the parent’s like, see, like, that’s— that is a form of prejudice, right? Like, when you just think this negative thing about someone just because of their race, and then it can hurt when, you know, they get confronted, like, did you steal my pencil? And so, you know, kids benefit the most in our sample when parents are confronting, when it’s like there’s that sort of tension of like, this isn’t overt, I’m not really sure what’s happening. And the parent comes in and says like, no, let’s, let’s talk about this, you know, and, and what might be going on here.
Andy Luttrell: Yeah, that is helpful. I, I was struck by that distinction too, that, that this was driven a lot by those kind of conversations about subtle bias. And it’s making me think that like, you know, I have to imagine a lot of education. Like, if we push this into, like, you know, what’s going on in schools and how are teachers talking about these sorts of things, I can only speak for myself. I have been thinking about, like, what was my— as a kid, like, what was my introduction to ideas like this? And it was mostly, like, school talking about super blatant historical American racism. And this is kind of making me think that, like, that— I mean, it’s an important history to teach, But maybe isn’t the road to, to sort of pursuing these more tolerant attitudes?
Sylvia Perry: Yeah. Yeah. So I think it’s important to make the distinction between interpersonal racism and more sort of historical and systemic racism. So at the interpersonal level, we think that one of the reasons why this more subtle stuff may matter is because that is the kind of racism that’s sort of more common among kids from day to day and among like the average, especially like well-meaning egalitarian-minded white person, right? So like, it’s easy to teach your kids like, don’t hate Black people. You know, don’t try to harm them because they’re Black, right? But it’s that more subtle stuff in those interpersonal interactions that kids might engage in, then the parents don’t want to push it or they don’t want to confront it, right? And so we think that, you know, one of the things that might be going on is that when the parent is pushing on that, that it’s really getting to the stuff that their kid is actually more likely to engage in, and it’s making them reflect a bit more on, like, if they have these preferences, right, and what that might look like, and also, like, how they would feel. It’s less akin to just like explicit overt bullying, right? So, you know, that is actually a limitation of our study, and that like we really are focusing on interpersonal racism. And when we looked at the conversations parents were having, they tended to also focus on what was happening between those two people. Do you sometimes engage in these behaviors? There were only a handful of parents who like took it beyond that, like, oh, like, do you think, you know, the police would be more likely to treat this child this way. So I think that the systemic part is actually really helpful because that actually helps children to make sense of sort of— so the stereotypes that they might develop, right, around like why certain people live in certain areas and other people live in other areas, why certain people have more stuff, and, you know, who’s in charge and all that, right? It’s the systemic lesson that’s going to help them make sense of that better. Like, oh, like we didn’t all get the same start, right? Like, it’s hard to rise to the top if you started down here and other people started way up here, and every time you tried to make your way up there, someone knocked you down and took all your stuff, right? Um, so that actually helps in a different kind of way, right? Where it’s like, what kinds of attributions am I making for the world and the way the world is set up? And you know, why certain people may be having different experiences or why certain kids might get into college more easily than other kids just because they don’t have the same resources or they weren’t treated the same way in school and that impacted their self-esteem. So I think that both are helpful. I think on an interpersonal level, focusing on those microaggressions and so forth is really important. But I think on, in terms of like kids developing stereotypes and like making assumptions about groups and like this whole group is like this because there’s something morally flawed about them. I actually think that systemic stuff can be really helpful.
Andy Luttrell: It’s interesting too, like given the, the kinds of conversations that are emerging through this procedure, that it’s having like a pretty substantial effect on implicit evaluations, right? I, I, I was kind of struck by how big that effect was. Given that, like, that outcome doesn’t seem like perfectly exactly tied to the nature of the conversations, but it is the kind of, like, abstraction that you would hope is resulting from those conversations.
Sylvia Perry: Yeah, we were shocked too. So I’ll say this, um, I won’t get into it too much, but when we first started this study, our intention was to look at more explicit measures as well. So repeated measures of those as well. And for various, like, we basically had a parent freak out in the beginning. And it became pretty clear that they, despite our best efforts, were kind of like privy to the hypotheses, because we had more explicit measures a couple times and so forth. So we had to take a step back and say like, okay, we have to remove some of this stuff. Like, what’s the thing we think matters the most? Like, what’s the lever we think we want to show, sort of, you know, push— we want to push down on and shift the most? And given what we knew, you know, from Yarrow Dunham’s work and Christina Olson’s work, um, and stuff they’ve done with Nazarene Banaji, we were like, okay, like, these implicit biases are important because kids probably aren’t going to want to say this overt stuff, especially 8 to 12. Like, younger kids might more easily say, oh, I prefer this group over this group, or I think this group is nicer than this group. Right. But when you get to the age group we’re in, we’re like, you know, Yarrow’s work was basically showing like implicit biases don’t tend to change across these cohorts, but explicit biases do. Right. And also we knew that like these more subtle kinds of messaging, like this more subtle kinds of messaging would probably be more linked to implicit biases, right? Like nonverbal signals and physiological reactions and so forth. That’s the stuff that’s going to potentially be more sensitive to shaping kids, you know, you get what I’m saying. And then at the same time, like, there just wasn’t any literature that had parents and kids in the same study measuring their implicit biases. Like, there were no former studies doing that. It was like, kids’ perceptions of their parents’ biases are linked to their implicit associations or, you know, things like that. But there were no studies that had them both in. And so we were also really curious about what happened when they came into the lab. Like, are they already correlated? And we did not find any associations. Like, it was like, like, I mean, the effect was, the effect size was tiny. It was like a flat line. Like if I were teaching research methods, like, what is this, a positive, negative, or zero correlation? Like, it was like flat.
Andy Luttrell: So, so you’re saying at baseline, kids’ and parents’ implicit bias scores were uncorrelated?
Sylvia Perry: Wow.
Andy Luttrell: Wow.
Sylvia Perry: I mean, like, really uncorrelated. Um, and then after the conversation, they were correlated at like 0.3. And when we looked at the data, parents are still correlated with themselves at like 0.8 or something. Kids are no longer correlated with themselves pre-post. But they’re correlated with parents. So their dots moved, they were sort of, you know, moving toward their parents in terms of these associations pre to post. So again, more evidence that whatever signals parents are sending, that’s influencing the child. So we found evidence that both parents’ and kids’ biases reduced. And it’s like kids are moving in line with their parents, right? So we, all of that stuff, you run the study, it takes 2 years, it’s a 2-hour methodology, you know, you spend all these hours coding and it’s like, my God, I hope we find something helpful, right? Like this thing was helpful in some way. And of course, you know, a limitation is that it is implicit biases. Like we don’t know what happens after that. That. But we do know, I mean, you know, there are sort of different camps in terms of how implicit biases work and where they come from, you know, but we do know that there is work that suggests that like you can make it reduce, but then if they go right back to that same environment, it’s going to probably pop back up because it’s sensitive to, you know, certain environmental cues and so forth. So like bias of crowds work, for example. And so, you know, one of the arguments we make is that maybe they’re not correlated at all because kids just aren’t getting these kinds of signals, right? Like what the literature showed is that how kids perceive their parents’ biases, like that’s what’s correlated with, like explicitly, right? Like asking their kids how prejudiced, that’s what’s correlated with their implicit biases. So maybe there’s something, some sort of signal they’re picking up on that’s more subtle in that conversation that then brings them more in line with where their parents are, whereas before they come in, they’re not having these outward, you know, these conversations where the parents are actually saying what they think or showing, you know, how they perceive this information. Um, and so if we can provide parents with tools to do this or encourage it, maybe after they go home, right, this could be something that’s consistently beneficial. And so You know, I mean, we tried to get grant funding, things were moving in the right direction. And I think, you know, where that went.
Andy Luttrell: Yeah.
Sylvia Perry: And so, but I will say that there are some junior people right now who have proposed some replication studies. So they preregistered replications and extending it to talking about systemic racism as well. So I suspect that in the next couple years, we may be getting more interesting data showing that multiple forms of conversations might be beneficial and also the potential long-term effects of this. And I’ll just say separately, we were really diligent about making sure that parents didn’t know why we were bringing them into the lab, like a true social psychologist, right? We like lied to them and said, you could be talking about about weight or gender or groups that are similar, different from your child, right? I have seen that like researchers who try to shift behavior and not just perception, but like recruit parents by saying like, if you wanna talk to your kid about race, join our study, that they have seen smaller effects and the effects that are non-significant, right? And so we really argue that like, We need to get a diversity of people into this space, and there needs to be a lot of variance in terms of where they’re starting and room for movement there, not just the people who already say they want to do it, right?
Andy Luttrell: So by way of wrapping up with a big practical takeaway, let’s say parents listening to this want to replicate this, but they don’t have a behavioral scientist to set them up with a perfectly tailored experience. Have you thought about like what, what, what can parents do in their own homes that simulates what you were having parents do in the lab?
Sylvia Perry: Yeah. Um, so I think, you know, there are a couple of things that could happen. I think that a parent could, and it can tell you sort of the way I’ve tried to approach it with my child who is Black-white biracial. And so there’s like, what I have learned over the years is that in some ways, like people have perceived them, especially when he was younger to be white or, you know, to have privileges of that. And then as he’s gotten older and sort of phenotypically changed, like, he’s more so perceived to be Black. But there are sort of conversations on both sides we’re having. But, you know, I think, like, trying to think about real-world examples or ways that things might show up in their environment, in school, on the playground, like, as they’re interacting with others, like, trying to bring those things up in a natural way using things that they observe on television or in the world to try to, you know, navigate those conversations. And importantly, if your child says something or they bring something home or you notice something, like not trying to like hand wave that away, right? And so I think that one thing that’s really important is to be curious. Like if your child says something, to just like, you know, try to see like where they are like, oh, like, why did you think that? You know, and, you know, what made you think about it in that way? And I wonder if, like, this might be going on, right? Like, oh, you said you thought that about your friend, or like, oh, like, why does, you know, why do Black kids do this, right? Like, oh, like, let’s unpack, like, what might be happening there and, you know, why you might be perceiving this in this way. I think that that is really helpful as well. Like, I think sometimes parents want to try control the narrative. And also, they might assume that their child is not where they are, right? They might not understand the child is a lot more far along in terms of their thinking about these really complex issues than they think. But I think, you know, really little kids, it’s just, you know, at most exposing them, right, to examples of diversity and being open to talking about how kids might look different and the beauty of that. And as kids get older, like really talking about things that are happening in the world. Like, you know, we’re talking— my son’s 7, 8— we’re talking about, you know, what’s happening with ICE. I mean, we had a situation happen in our school area within walking distance of our home where people who were working on people’s yards, who also have worked on our yard, were confronted and they tried to kidnap them. And then people had whistles everywhere, right? And it’s like, let’s talk about how because someone looks Latino, right? Like they assume that they were a criminal or that they don’t belong here. And let’s talk through, you know, how do you feel about that? How does that make you feel? Like, how do you think that people might experience that, would feel? How would you feel if you experienced that? And like, you know, let’s talk about why that might happen to someone, right? So I think that there is, you know, we’ve sort of argued that, especially now, when things that are really overt, and really obvious are happening in our environment, where people are being discriminated against and treated, you know, in a horrible way because of how they look and their background, that this is like a really prime opportunity for parents to say, like, have you seen this on the news? Or are you guys talking about this at school, or like, you might encounter this. And let’s talk about how that’s unfair. Like, kids really understand fairness, right? And they’re really sensitive to that. And, you know, trying to bring them into the world of the individual who may be experiencing that. And that’s very abstract, you know. But like, I guess, like, what I’m saying is, I think that parents want their child to be empathetic, right? They want their child to understand other people’s points of view. And I think parents are really good at helping when their child hits another child or takes something from another child or whatever, and explaining like, hey, like, that wasn’t fair, like, and, you know, and here’s why. And even if kids are very egocentric, right, at that particular point in time, they still understand like the idea of like fairness, right? And not taking something from someone and treating them unfairly. So I think that parents can really pull from that knowledge of, you know, how they tend to want to shape who their child is and apply that to experiences of, you know, prejudice, discrimination.
Andy Luttrell: That’s great. That’s super helpful. And thank you for taking the time to talk about it and for doing this I’ll be curious to see the new, the new insights that come out from this line of work going forward. So thank you.
Sylvia Perry: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.
