Most conscientious adults tend to avoid making biased or discriminatory comments in the presence of children.

But new from the 91̽�� suggests that preschool-aged children can learn bias even through nonverbal signals displayed by adults, such as a condescending tone of voice or a disapproving look. Published Dec. 21 in the journal Psychological Science, the research found that children can “catch” social bias by seeing negative signals expressed by adults and are likely to generalize that learned bias to others.

“This research shows that kids are learning bias from the non-verbal signals that they’re exposed to, and that this could be a mechanism for the creation of racial bias and other biases that we have in our society,” said lead author , a postdoctoral researcher in the UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.

“Kids are picking up on more than we think they are, and you don’t have to tell them that one group is better than another group for them to be getting that message from how we act.”

The research involved an initial group of 67 children ages 4 and 5, an equal mix of boys and girls. The children were shown a video in which two different female actors displayed positive signals to one woman and negative signals to another woman. All people in the video were the same race, to avoid the possibility of racial bias factoring into the results.

The actors greeted both women the same way and did the same activities with both (for example, giving each a toy) but the actors’ nonverbal signals differed when interacting with one woman versus the other. The actor spoke to one woman in a positive way — smiling, leaning toward her, using a warm tone of voice — and the other negatively, by scowling, leaning away and speaking in a cold tone. The children were then asked a series of questions — such as who they liked the best and who they wanted to share a toy with — intended to gauge whether they favored the recipient of positive nonverbal signals over the recipient of negative nonverbal signals.

The results showed a consistent pattern of children favoring the recipient of positive nonverbal signals. Overall, 67 percent of children favored the recipient of positive nonverbal signals over the other woman — suggesting they were influenced by the bias shown by the actor.

The researchers also wondered if nonverbal signals could lead to group bias or prejudice. To get at that question, they recruited an additional 81 children ages 4 and 5. The children were shown the same videos from the previous study, then a researcher introduced them to the “best friends” of the people in the video. The “friends” were described as members of the same group, with each wearing the same color shirt as their friend. The children were then asked questions to assess whether they favored one friend over the other.

Strikingly, the results showed that children favored the friend of the recipient of positive nonverbal signals over the friend of the other woman. Taken together, the researchers say, the results suggest that biases extend beyond individuals to members of groups they are associated with.

Skinner pointed out that many American preschoolers live in fairly homogenous environments, with limited ability to witness positive interactions with people from diverse populations. So even brief exposure to biased nonverbal signals, she said, could result in them developing generalized biases. The simulations created for the study represent just a small sample of what children likely witness in real life, Skinner said.

“Children are likely exposed to nonverbal biases demonstrated by multiple people toward many different members of a target group,” she said. “It is quite telling that brief exposure to biased nonverbal signals was able to create a bias among children in the lab.”

The study’s findings, she said, underscore the need for parents and other adults to be aware of the messages — verbal or otherwise — that they convey to children about how they feel about other people.

Co-authors are , co-director of the 91̽��Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, and , a 91̽��assistant professor of psychology. Funding for the research was provided by the 91̽�� Ready Mind Project Innovative Research Fund.

For more information, contact Skinner at 206-685-1310 or skinna2@uw.edu.

A 2012 by the Pew Research Center found that interracial marriages in the U.S. had doubled between 1980 and 2010 to about 15 percent, and just 11 percent of respondents disapproved of interracial marriage.

But new from the 91̽�� suggests that reported acceptance of interracial marriage masks deeper feelings of discomfort — even disgust — that some feel about mixed-race couples. Published online in July in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and co-authored by 91̽��postdoctoral researcher , the study found that bias against interracial couples is associated with disgust that in turn leads interracial couples to be dehumanized.

Lead author , a 91̽��postdoctoral researcher, said she undertook the study after noting a lack of in-depth research on bias toward interracial couples.

“I felt like the polls weren’t telling the whole story,” said Skinner, a researcher in the UW’s .

The research involved three experiments. In the first, 152 college students were asked a series of questions about relationships, including how disgusted they felt about various configurations of interracial relationships and about their own willingness to have an interracial romance. The participants overall showed high levels of acceptance and low levels of disgust about interracial relationships, and pointed to a strong negative correlation between the two.

In the second experiment, the researchers showed 19 undergraduate students wedding and engagement photos of 200 interracial and same-race couples while recording their neural activity. The researchers asked the students to quickly indicate whether each couple should be included in a future study on relationships, a task that was intended to ensure participants were socially evaluating the couples while their neural activity was recorded.

Participants responded faster to images of same-race couples and selected them more often for inclusion in the study. More significantly, Skinner said, participants showed higher levels of activation in the — an area of the brain routinely implicated in the perception and experience of disgust — while viewing images of interracial couples.

“That indicates that viewing images of interracial couples evokes disgust at a neural level,” Skinner said.

As with all neuroscience studies, Skinner said, it is impossible to be certain whether the insula activation reflected a disgust response, since the insula is sometimes responsive to other emotions. But in combination with the other experiments, the authors believe it is evidence of a neural disgust response.

Lastly, the researchers used an , used to measure attitudes and beliefs people may be unwilling to acknowledge, to gauge whether feeling disgusted would impact more than 200 participants’ feelings about interracial couples. One group was first shown a series of disgusting images (a dirty toilet, a person vomiting), while the other was shown pleasant images of cityscapes and nature.

During the implicit association test, the two groups were tasked with categorizing photographs of same-race and interracial couples and silhouettes of humans and animals. They were first instructed to press one computer key if the image showed an animal silhouette or a mixed-race couple, and another key if it was a human silhouette or a same-race couple. Then the combinations were switched — participants were told to hit one key if the image was an animal silhouette or a same-race couple, and the other key if it was a human silhouette or mixed-race couple.

Participants were quicker to associate interracial couples with non-human animals and same-race couples with humans. That suggests that interracial couples are more likely to be dehumanized than same-race couples, the researchers write, and previous studies have shown that people tend to exhibit more antisocial behavior and are more likely to use aggression and even violence toward dehumanized targets.

Taken together, the experiments show that despite high levels of reported acceptance, bias against mixed-race couples persists in the United States, the researchers say. In 2013, they note, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen caused a furor when he that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s interracial marriage incited “a gag reflex” among some people, prompting the Post to write a follow-up about the controversy.

Such sentiments, Skinner said, belie the notion that most Americans are ready to embrace mixed-race romance.

“Some people are still not comfortable with interracial relationships, or at least they’re a lot less comfortable than they would appear to be,” she said. “Acknowledging these biases is the first step to figuring out why people feel that way and determining what can be done so they won’t.”

For more information, contact Skinner at 206-685-1310 or skinna2@uw.edu.

The research, conducted by 91̽��postdoctoral researcher and July 12 in the open-access journal , used a series of experiments to gauge participants’ level of support for policing reforms in relation to whether they felt threatened by police officers or black men.

The study found that the degree to which participants viewed police as threatening was linked to their tendency to support reformed policing practices, such as limiting the use of lethal force and requiring police force demographics to match those of the community. By contrast, when they perceived black men as threatening, participants were less likely to support policing reforms.

“This speaks to the potential influence of racial biases in attitudes about policing policy reform,” said , a researcher in the UW’s . “Racial attitudes are tied up into people’s policy positions and how they feel about these seemingly unrelated topics.”

The findings come a week after the nation was roiled by the killings of two black men by police in Baton Rouge and Minnesota and the murders of five police officers in Dallas. Skinner and co-author , an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, launched the study about eight weeks after unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was fatally shot in August 2014 by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

Brown’s killing prompted widespread calls for policing reform, and the two researchers sought to investigate the role that perceived threat might play in support for such reforms. For the first experiment, they asked 216 mostly white university students to rate the extent to which they felt threatened by police officers and black men as a result of Brown’s shooting. They also asked participants about their support for specific policing reform measures and whether they thought lethal force was justified under particular circumstances.

The same experiment was then repeated with a more demographically representative — though still largely white — sample, with similar results. Respondents in both experiments were “significantly” more threatened by police officers than by black men. In both groups, those who saw police officers as threatening were more likely to support policing reforms, while a higher threat association with black men predicted less support for reforms.

Their responses about lethal force were also similar, though the second group deemed lethal force less acceptable in some circumstances — for example, while almost 25 percent of respondents in the student sample thought it was appropriate for police to use deadly force when someone is committing a crime, just 11 percent in the community sample did.

The researchers then took the experiment a step further. Since the findings from the first two studies could not prove a causal relationship, they sought to determine if showing participants threatening images of police officers and black men would actually influence their support for policing reforms. They showed a new set of participants threatening images of police officers or of black men, then asked participants the same reform questions asked in the previous experiments. Control groups were shown images of the officers or black men with neutral facial expressions.

The researchers tried to account for racial bias by asking participants a series of questions about their racial attitudes and factoring that information into the model. Overall, they found that respondents with low levels of racial bias were most supportive of policing policy reforms, but that exposure to threatening images of black men reduced support for reform. By contrast, participants with high bias levels were equally supportive of policing reforms regardless of whether they saw black men as threatening.

“That suggests that people with high racial bias have a tendency to oppose policing reform and support less restrictive policing policies,” Skinner said.

A final experiment involving alternating images of threatening items — ferocious dogs, snakes — with neutral images of police officers and black men to determine whether participants could be conditioned to associate threat with either group. Participants were also asked about their fear of crime and whether they would be willing to sign a petition supporting policing reform.

Although the images did not impact attitudes toward policing reforms, Skinner said, the experiment showed that respondents who saw black men as threatening were more fearful about crime.

“As you might expect, the more threatened participants felt by police, the more willing they were to sign a petition in support of police reform, and the more threatened participants felt by black men, the less willing they were to sign the petition,” she said.

But the researchers also found evidence that the images influenced willingness to sign the petition. Participants in a control group agreed to sign the petition (58 percent) at rates higher than chance (50 percent), while among participants who were conditioned to associate black men with threat, willingness to sign the petition was at chance (49 percent).

The studies have limitations, the researchers acknowledged. Intensive media coverage and debate about race and policing policy reform could influence public opinion, they note, and the study participants were primarily white — making it unclear whether the findings can be generalized across minority groups.

But overall, Skinner said, the research provides strong evidence that the notion of threat is related to public support of policing reforms.

“It speaks to the relationship between racial attitudes and attitudes about policing,” she said. “By knowing that relationship exists, we can then start thinking about how to address it.”

The research was supported by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.