Despite the fact that having conversations about race has been recommended as a way to curb children’s racial biases, no prior work has directly tested the impact of parents having these (racial socialization) conversations with their children. Most White American parents avoid talking about race and racism with their children, which seems to be due, in part, to White parents’ fear that increasing their children’s awareness and acknowledgement of race could lead to increased racial biases. With the current work, we examined the impact of a parental racial socialization conversation on children’s implicit anti-Black attitudes. Additionally, given parents' fears about such conversations, we assessed behavioral evidence of parental tenseness and anxiety during these discussions, and explored whether such cues moderated children’s implicit attitudes. Results revealed that children’s (and parents’) implicit attitudes significantly decreased from pre-to-post conversation. Moreover, even at relatively high levels, neither parental tenseness nor anxiety increased implicit anti-Black attitudes among children. Overall, our findings suggest the discomfort that White adults often experience when openly discussing racial issues need not be a barrier to progress, and that it may actually be helpful for White children to see their parents model discomfort with racist acts.

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Although parent-child conversations about race are recommended to curb White US children’s racial biases, little work has tested their influence. We designed a guided (subtle and blatant) racism discussion task for US White parents and their 8-12-year-old White children. We explored whether children’s and parents’ (1) pro-White implicit biases changed pre-to-post conversation, (2) racial socialization messages (color conscious, external attributions for prejudiced behavior, colorblind racial ideology) predicted changes in their implicit biases, and (3) associations varied by the type of racism discussed. Children’s and parents’ biases significantly declined, pre-to-post discussion. Parents’ color conscious messages predicted greater declines, and messages reflecting colorblind racial ideology and external attributions predicted smaller declines in children’s bias. These patterns were observed during discussions of subtle, but not blatant bias. Effects of children’s messages on parents’ bias were mixed. Our findings suggest that color conscious parent-child discussions may effectively reduce implicit pro-White bias in White children.

Observing nonverbal signals being directed toward unfamiliar individuals is known to influence attitudes and behavior toward those individuals. Specifically, observing biased nonverbal signals in favor of one individual over another can produce nonverbal signal-consistent attitudes among preschool children. Research has also shown that people have a tendency to mimic the behavior of others. The phenomenon of mimicking another’s nonverbal emotional response and “catching” their emotions has long been established. However, it has yet to be examined whether this phenomenon is associated with attitude contagion. We hypothesized that preschool children who mimic the biased nonverbal signals of others will be more likely to adopt their social attitudes. Results of the current study indicated that as emotional mimicry became more frequent, children showed an increasingly greater probability of acquiring nonverbal signal-consistent attitudes. Moreover, the frequency of negative—but not positive—emotional mimicry was related to an increased probability of showing nonverbal signal-consistent attitudes. Our findings provide initial support for the notion that mimicking others’ biased nonverbal signals may help facilitate attitude contagion.