Affective Associations by Japanese Pre-School Children to Black and White Boxes

Abstract

To determine if early affective associations toward black and white occur in Japan a procedure used for American children was modified and used with 32 Japanese 5-yr.-olds. They sorted 28 objects into “good” and “bad” and “liked” and “disliked” groups and were then asked to decide if a replica of each were in a black or a white box. Unlike the American sample, there was no greater attribution of the positively evaluated objects to the white box than the black box although significantly more children preferred the white to the black box. Object preferences of American and Japanese children correlated highly.