"Show me the ugly child."

[Alex Franke]

I saw a blurb on this last night and it struck me as interesting. I'm not sure I agree with how the test was conducted. We had a good discussion about it last night and I was interested in getting some other points of view as well.

Basically, a bunch of kids were shown a picture of five cartoon-like kids, each identical except that the skin tone went from lighter on the left to darker on the right. They were told things like "show me the ugly child" and "show me the smart child." After each answer they were asked, "Why is that the ugly/smart/etc child?"

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/18/doll.study.parents/index.html?hpt=C2

I haven't read the whole study, but as to the methodology, it seems to me that if you're going to force a decision where the only different is skin color, then a kid will probably consider the one who looks most like him/her to have the same traits as him/her. And then the answer to the second question will *always* have something to do with color (or possibly position -- "he's the one on the left").

Wouldn't it be better to at least put them in a different order and ask "are any of these children ugly/smart/mean/etc?" And if you're going to ask "why is that the [whatever] child," then couldn't they at least have different features or wear different clothes?

Scientifically speaking, would you consider this a quality study?

I know some of you probably know the business of research pretty well, and I'm very interested in reading your thoughts and civil discussion on this...

[LinuxRandal]

This seems to get the same results as quantum mechanics. You can have a prediction (trying to find bias's already in the child), but by asking/observing, you are affecting the result. (you can be the cause of the bias with the question)

I've readily seen both sides of the issue, and have had discussions, which would have probably been more heated, if not with who and when/where I had them. But in general, this topic can get at least as heated as politics and religion.

My view, everybody has prejudices of one kind or another. Part of it is from observation (learned both taught and observed), and part of it is from experiences. The goal is to figure out which has basis in reality (AND why) and not to pass on to the next generation.

[crokett]

Alex, I saw that study, did some reading and came to the same conclusion you did. The questions skewed the results. Also giving the same 100 kids the same pictures in the same order could also skew results. You could mix things up so you used different pictures in different orders to avoid that possibility. I am not sure how you ask the questions to avoid influencing answers.

[woodturner]

Scientifically speaking, would you consider this a quality study?

Anyone can call anything "research". I found nothing in that article to suggest that scientific research was done, and no evidence of peer reviewed publications.

Their sample size appears to be way too small to draw any valid conclusion, and their testing methodology biases the outcome.

In my opinion, it's a "staged" study to create controversy and thus interest in the TV program.

[herb fellows]

It is interesting, in the sense that maybe this deserves further study, based on these very limited attempts.

I don't think anyone would claim it is scientific by any stretch of the imagination, really almost anecdotal in nature.

At that age, 'she's not like me' can mean a lot of different things.

[Mr__Bill]

My sister told of being at the beach the first time one of her girls saw a black person her own age. The two girls ran to where my sister was sitting and and my niece exclaimed, 'Look mommy at her beautiful suntan!"

I think that we all have a bias against people who are not part of the group we as individuals consider at any given point in time as us. In the example the only difference available to the children when asked to differentiate was color, thus color was used for the decision the child was forced to make and the positive choice for their own color and negative for the most different color was to be expected. I expect that the same outcome would have resulted if the difference was size, from the child's size to very large.

The problem with using the direct results from testing like this is, often what is really being tested is not obvious on the surface. Did they want to know what the children's thoughts were or were they really testing just how easy it is to manipulate children and their parents? Or how easy it it to get a non-critical thinking audience to jump to the conclusion of your choice? Personally, I think an analysis of the reactions of the parents would revel far more interesting information. However I feel that what was really being demonstrated here is, as others have stated, just how easy it is to create a test procedure that returns the results you want.

Bill
actually when I read the topic my first thought was, Dang how did he find my baby pictures!

[Alex Franke]

My 5-year old happened to be reading a book from the library today called Max Goes On the Bus (Adria Klein) and the picture below was on one of the spreads.

My wife asked him (and later his little sister) which kids were the nicest and smartest. My boy at first couldn't decide, but then he finally chose the two boys. My girl chose the two girls on the outside. (The girl on the right was smartest "because of her backpack.")



Of course this was hardly scientific, but it didn't surprise me at all that the boy picked boys and the girl picked girls... I wonder what the results of that study would have been if they used a picture like this...