Children’s bias beyond group boundaries: perceived differences, outgroup attitudes, and prosocial behavior

This study examined how children's perceptions of social group dissimilarities impact attitudes and behavior towards real-world outgroups. Focusing on Arab-Christian children living in Israel, we explored categorization into social groups based on multiple dimensions of social identity. The children (N = 231, 52% female, average age 9.8 years) were randomly presented with either Arab-Muslim or Jewish outgroup targets and performed tasks measuring perceptions, attitudes and prosocial behavior towards the outgroup. Results showed that the children perceived the Jewish outgroup as more dissimilar to their ingroup than the Arab-Muslim outgroup. They evaluated the Arab-Muslim outgroup more positively and favored them in resource allocation. The extent to which bias was influenced by the number of identity dimensions varied based on the outgroup target’s identity and the task performed. We discuss possible categorization strategies employed by children and their implications for promoting positive intergroup attitudes and behaviors during middle childhood.