Conditioning of Racial Attitudes and Color Concepts in Children

Abstract

This investigation sought to determine whether or not attitudes of kindergarten children could be modified through classical conditioning procedures. Ss in Exp. I were asked to evaluate Negroes following exposure to the conditioning procedures, while Ss in Exps. II and III were asked to evaluate the color black and black animals, respectively, following exposure to the conditioning procedures. Only the experimentally treated Ss in the latter two experiments adopted significantly more favorable attitudes toward the objects in question than their control counterparts. It appears that, while there were a sufficient number of conditioning trials to change attitudes of kindergarten children toward the color black and black animals, there were not enough conditioning trials to change their atti rudes toward Negroes.