EFFECTS OF OWN GROUP SUCCESS OR FAILURE ON JUDGMENTS OF TASK-PERFORMANCE BY CHILDREN OF DIFFERENT ETHNICITIES

Children in majority groups hold favourable attitudes toward members o f their own group, whereas those in minority groups typically hold mor e favourable attitudes toward majority than own group members. It was expected that when evaluating task outcomes, majority group children w ould display own group favouritism, and minority children would show o ther group favouritism or 'reverse ethnocentrism'. In this study, whit e and Native Indian elementary school children saw a video of a white and native child listening to sounds and trying to identify them. One- third of subjects saw white models correct more often models, and the remaining third saw both models correct on an equal number of trials. When white models were successful, children from both groups made more positive evaluations of, optimistic predictions about, and internal a ttributions for task outcomes. When these models did poorly, negative attributes were deemphasized and task outcomes were attributed to exte rnal factors. Success by native models was attributed to external fact ors and task outcomes had little influence on predictions or evaluatio ns. When native models were unsuccessful subjects accentuated negative attributes of these models and made internal attributions for their f ailures. Results were discussed in terms of cognitive and motivational theories of social judgements.