ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Cognitive Development
Investigating a race-based strength bias across development: Evidence from children, adolescents, and adults
Tufts University, Medford, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Abstract
White adults perceive Black men as stronger, taller, heavier, and more capable of harm than White men of the same size. The current study aimed to investigate the development of this race-based size bias. Children (6-11 years), adolescents (12-17 years), and adults (18+-year-old college students) judged the strength, height, and weight of Black and White characters who participated in negative interactions; we recruited a racially diverse sample, though most participants in the final sample were White individuals. Although we did not find consistent evidence for biases related to height or weight, we did identify age-related differences in a race-based bias related to strength across development. Children's strength ratings depended on the actions characters engaged in, but not their race; adolescents ratings depended separately on actions and race; adults' race-based biases for strength varied by actions. These findings are discussed as to how they might relate to how a race-based size biases seen in adulthood emerges across development.
Summary
Keywords
adolescents6, Children5, physical size3, race-based size bias4, racial bias2, stereotypes1, strength7
Received
10 June 2025
Accepted
19 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Wefferling and Muentener. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Julia Wefferling
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.