Study finds 9-month-old babies are racist5/5/2012
Babies -- so cute, so precious, so ... racist? University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers placed sensors on the heads of 9-month -old babies (this already sounds like a dystopian nightmare) and measured brain activity when infants were shown pictures of white and black faces expressing emotion. Five-month-old babies could differentiate between happy or sad faces in both races equally. Nine-month-old babies related better to their own race. Also, the 5-month-olds' brain activity happened in the front of the brain; the older, more racist babies experienced activity in the back. Researchers agree the clear solution is to put those racist babies in timeout! Just kidding: Researchers hope this sheds light on how our minds develop connections to different races in the first year of life.