Babies Are 'Racist' - And We Have The Cure, Say Scientists

As early as three months old, children can show racial bias towards women who are the same race as themselves.

University of Delaware scientists claim to have found a technique which can reverse this unconscious bias.

Paul Quinn of the University of Delaware found that, by nine months old, infants were less able to identify individuals of different races.

But he found that a simple exercise where infants were taught to identify faces with names could help to ‘reverse’ the trend.

'Might these perceptual biases we see in infants be related to the social biases that we see in older kids, beginning at three or four years of age, and adults?,’ Quinn writes.

'And if they are, can we use a technique to reduce bias?

'As we tried to answer this question, we hit on the idea that if the perceptual and social biases are linked, we might be able to reduce the social bias by perceptual means.'