Hughes Policeman Doll Study

3 Key excerpts on "Hughes Policeman Doll Study"

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  Social Psychology

  How Other People Influence Our Thoughts and Actions [2 volumes]

  • Randal W. Summers(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  Classic Experiments in Social Psychology   1939–1940s—Clark Doll Experiment, Mamie Phipps Clark and Kenneth Bancroft Clark

  The doll experiment was first conducted as part of Mamie Phipps Clark’s master’s thesis in 1939 at Howard University. In 1950 Mamie Phipps Clark and her husband Kenneth Bancroft Clark repeated the experiments across the country with 300 children. The Clarks were looking at how racial stereotypes can become ingrained in the self-esteem of racially segregated schoolchildren. They used two identical dolls, except one was dark colored and one was white colored. The children were African Americans between the ages of six and nine and were asked a number of questions about the dolls, like which one they liked more, which one was bad, which one was nice, which one they would rather play with, or which one looks like them, and so on. The results indicated that 44 percent of the black children said the white doll looked like them. In addition, students of these segregated schools were more likely to pick the white doll as the nice one. The Clarks, who were African American, found in one study, involving 16 black children from Clarendon County, South Carolina, that 63 percent of them chose the white doll as the nice one and the one they wanted to play with. This study became the highlight of the testimony presented to the Supreme Court in the case of Brown v. Board . The court ruled to end racial segregation.

  Further Reading

  Ahuja, G. “What a doll tells us about race.” ABC News, March 31, 2009. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7213714&page=1 .

  Columbia University Libraries. “Mamie Clark.” Notable New Yorkers, 2006. Retrieved from www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/nny/clarkm .

  Proulx, M. G. “Professor revisits Clark doll tests.” The Harvard Crimson, 2011. Retrieved from www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/12/1/clark-dolls-research-media

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  Encyclopedia of Counseling

  • Frederick T. Leong, Frederick T. L. Leong(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Clark’s early work focused on racial identity devel- opment in African American children. In a set of exper- iments known as the doll studies, African American children were presented with dolls that were identical in every way except for skin color. Some of the dolls were brown to represent African American children, and some were pinkish to represent White children. Clark and the research team asked participants a series of questions about the dolls, such as “Which one is you?” and “Give me the doll that you like the best.” The results from this series of experiments indicated that even as young as age 3, a majority of African American children were aware of the classifications of White and African American. The results also revealed that although many children identified themselves with the African American doll, a large proportion expressed a preference for the white dolls and a rejection of the brown dolls. In the eyes of many African American children, white dolls were associated with goodness and intelligence, whereas brown dolls were associated with ignorance and other negative characteristics. Clark found these results particularly disturbing. The views of the children in the study highlighted the profound psychological conflict facing African American children in the United States at that time. Clark argued that as African American children grew, the already difficult process of identity development was further complicated for them by the cultural def- initions of race. The children knew that they were African American and were also aware of the insult- ing value that culture had placed on this group. Clark became preoccupied with understanding what factors created the perception of African Americans as bad and Whites as good. He theorized that these ideas were the result of pervasive cultural prejudice. The way that African Americans were treated in virtually every sphere of American life taught children that African Americans were inferior to Whites.

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  Adoption, Race, and Identity

  From Infancy to Young Adulthood

  • William Laufer(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4 Their early work serves as a benchmark for most of the subsequent studies of young children’s racial

  Table 6.1 Percentage of Children Selecting the White Doll

  attitudes and awareness. The basic design the Clarks employed involved presenting black subjects between the ages of about three and seven with white and brown baby dolls and asking the children, “Give me the doll that ...”

  1. You like to play with best
  2. Is a nice doll
  3. Looks bad
  4. is a nice color
  5. Looks like a colored child
  6. Looks like a Negro child
  7. Looks like a white child
  8. Looks like you

  Items 1 through 4 were intended to measure racial attitudes; Items 5 through 7, racial awareness; and Item 8, racial identity. With variations, such as the introduction of a third doll with skin lighter than that of the brown doll or the use of dolls other than baby dolls, this technique for measuring young children’s attitudes and awareness about race has been used up to the present time by researchers in the United States, New Zealand, South Africa, and England.

  The Clarks’ basic results are shown in Table 6.1 .

  On the items that measure racial preferences or attitudes (1 through 4), most of the children exhibited a white bias. On the items that measure awareness (5 through 7), almost all the children indicated their ability to differentiate skin color. On the item that measures identification (8), two-thirds of the children identified themselves accurately.

  Table 6.2 Percentage of Children Selecting the White Doll, by Age

  When the children were divided into homogeneous age categories, the Clarks found that older children were more likely to identify themselves correctly and to distinguish the white doll from the brown doll. But age made little difference in the attitude items. The older children were as likely to express pro-white attitudes as were the younger ones. (See Table 6.2

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