Social and Cognitive Bases of Ethnic Identity Constancy

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Abstract
Ethnic identity constancy was studied in order to extend the conclusions drawn from gender constancy research about the child's understanding of invariance. Ethnic constancy was operationalized as the stable categorization of a boy in terms of his ethnic group despite a clothing transformation. Children from 6 to 9 years of age were shown a sequence of photographs depicting the boy's transformation and required to make three types of ethnic identification. Constancy was not clearly evident till 8 years. To determine the abilities underlying its development, constancy was factor analyzed along with scores of a number of social and cognitive/perceptual measures. Constancy loaded on the first factor along with a social inference (inferring the boy's friend preference) and a measure of cognitive decentration (conservation of mass). The latter two abilities, according to a Guttman scalogram, were acquired before constancy, as was the awareness of ethnic permanence. It was concluded that ethnic constancy requires concrete operational thought, specifically the ability to infer an internal state that is contrary to external appearances.