The study takes an undoubtedly important place in several other works devoted to modern people’s prejudices. Scientists argue that at an early age, children tend to adopt adult behavior patterns and their biases. To study this phenomenon, they used the terms bias and prejudice. They showed preschool children videos of specific behavior patterns and monitored whether children acted in the same way (Skinner, Meltzkoff & Olson, 2017). The study results are generally predictable and clearly show the process of the formation of social prejudices. In my opinion, children are indeed inclined to adopt the behavior patterns of adults. Thus, impressed by the videos shown, they begin to behave the same way.
The research method is reasonably appropriate. First, sight and hearing are crucial channels for the perception of information. Second, because today’s children often spend time in front of the screen, so for them, video is a familiar way of obtaining data. However, undoubtedly, familiar people behaving in a certain way would make a more remarkable impression. In other words, this experiment could be carried out in a friendly environment for children, exhibiting biases more subtly but regularly.
For further research, it would be interesting to transfer the experiment to real life. The same group of children can be used to make the data as meaningful as possible, but the central aspect is to keep the age range. Adult behavior patterns should be similar to those shown in the previous experiment. This research approach will show how the adoption of biases occurs in real life. This will make it possible to understand how much children are predisposed to copying behavior from adults who are significant to them.
Reference
Skinner, A. L., Meltzkoff, A. N., & Olson, A. R. (2017). “Catching” social bias: Exposure to biased nonverbal signals creates social biases in preschool children. Psychological Science, 28, 216-224. Web.