The Doll Technique and Racial Attitudes

Abstract

Color preferences and self-identification responses were elicited from children by their choices among black, white, and green dolls. Eighty-two black and 80 white children, 47 to 73 months of age, were interviewed. Twenty-four of them were from interracial adoptive families. Conclusions from prior studies were replicated only when certain peculiarities of design (a certain question order and number of dolls) were repeated: These design features combined to produce artifactually erroneous self-identifications by black children. Although both adoptive and nonadoptive children exhibited high levels of color awareness, children from interracial adoptive families differed from the rest of the subject group by more frequently making a correct self-identification. Verbal preferences did not correlate with observed behavior among subjects who played with the dolls.