Vidas negras importam: estudos sobre o comportamento pró-social de crianças pardas e pretas brasileiras

Abstract

Prosociality, in the eyes of some evolution theorists, is seen as the key to understanding the success of humanity, being a factor found present from the first months of child development. The objective behind the present thesis is to investigate the effect of the exclusion suffered by pardo and black people, and the belonginess social group, on prosocial behavior in Brazilian children. To achieve this goal, use was made of implicit and explicit measures. The first chapter is a general introduction. The second chapter brings a theoretical review of the theories of evolution that cover prosocial behavior, and which focus on the theory of cultural evolution. The third chapter is composed of a systematic review of studies that investigate the effects of priming on prosocial behavior in children. The fourth chapter comprises of three empirical studies that analyze, (1) the association between sharing and the identification of the child how white, pardo and black, (2) the effect of skin color in prosocial priming, and (3) the choice of a black or white character as friends. Our findings pointed to an association between the identification how white, pardo and black of the child and sharing; an increase in sharing under the condition with prosocial priming, regardless of skin color bias; and the preference of a white character as a friend. The fifth chapter reports on the construction and validation of the Implicit Association Test for assessing prosociality in children (IAT-PSC). The test presented good internal consistency and a satisfactory validation of the items. The sixth chapter is comprised of two studies, in which the participants are children that reside in urban areas, rural zones and in quilombo communities. The results demonstrate greater sharing among urban children, but greater implicit prosocial preference among children from quilombo communities. Lastly, the seventh chapter summarizes the general conclusions of the thesis. When taken together, our studies suggest that ostracism, prejudice, and group belonging are factors that influence prosocial behavior in children, both explicitly and implicitly.