The intergenerational transmission of ethnic essentialism: how parents talk counts the most.

The present study analyzed the role of parents as potential sources of children's essentialist beliefs about ethnicity. We tested 76 parent-child (5-year-olds) dyads of Jewish Israeli parents from three social groups, defined by the kindergartens children attended: national religious, secular, or Jewish-Arab integrated. We assessed parents' and children's beliefs, and parents' usage of ethnic attitudinal and categorization markers in a book-reading activity.

Seeing isn't believing: the effect of intergroup exposure on children's essentialist beliefs about ethnic categories.

Adults and children seem to essentialize certain social categories. Three studies investigated whether, and how, exposure to ethnic diversity affects this bias. Participants were 516 kindergarten, 2nd grade, and 6th grade Israeli Jewish and Arab children attending regular (mono-cultural) or integrated schools.

The development of social essentialism: the case of israeli children's inferences about jews and arabs.

Two studies examined the inductive potential of various social categories among 144 kindergarten, 2nd-, and 6th-grade Israeli children from 3 sectors: secular Jews, religious Jews, and Muslim Arabs. Study 1-wherein social categories were labeled-found that ethnic categories were the most inductively powerful, especially for religious Jewish children. Study 2-wherein no social category labels were provided-found no differences across sectors either in the inductive potential of ethnic categories or in children's capacity to visually recognize social categories.