Friendships across gender and race linked to greater kindness in children, study finds

A new study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that elementary school children with friends from different gender or racial backgrounds are more likely to act kindly toward peers who differ from them—sometimes even across group lines. The findings highlight the powerful role that cross-group friendships can play in shaping prosocial behavior during a formative developmental period.

Although previous research has often focused on reducing overt prejudice, less attention has been paid to how children express positive behaviors, like helping, toward outgroup members. The authors of the new study were especially interested in whether having friends from one outgroup (e.g., a different gender) might also encourage helping behavior toward members of another outgroup (e.g., a different racial status)—a phenomenon known as the “secondary transfer effect.”

“I was the ‘new’ kid during elementary school, middle school, and high school, and felt like an outsider in accounting during college. I experienced it again when I became a school teacher, and later when I transitioned to psychology in graduate school in the United States. These experiences drove my interests in kindness and inclusion among various individuals who are similar and different from each other,” said study author Sonya Xinyue Xiao, an assistant professor at Northern Arizona University.

The study involved 603 students from public schools in the southwestern United States. Children ranged in age from 7 to 11 years old, with a nearly even split between girls and boys. Just over half of the sample came from racially minoritized backgrounds. Peer relationships were assessed twice during the school year—once in the fall and again in the spring. Students nominated classmates they considered best friends and those they believed were helpful to them. These nominations were used to create measures of intergroup friendships and prosocial behavior directed toward peers who differed by gender or racial status.

The researchers first examined the “primary effects” of intergroup contact. Children who had more friends of a different gender were more likely to be nominated as helpful by other-gender classmates several months later. This effect remained even after accounting for children’s earlier prosocial behavior and their number of same-gender friends. Similarly, children with more friends of a different racial status were more likely to be viewed as helpful by classmates from different racial backgrounds over time.

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These findings provide evidence that friendships across group lines can support more inclusive prosocial behavior. Interestingly, the benefits of having different-gender friends were not limited to gender-based kindness. Children with more other-gender friends were also more likely to be nominated as helpful by peers of a different racial status—suggesting that intergroup friendships in one domain can positively influence behavior in another. This is what the researchers refer to as the “secondary transfer effect.”

“Overall, our findings showed relatively strong support for the benefits of friendships with other-gender peers (i.e., boys with girls; girls with boys) in children’s prosocial behavior toward various peers (i.e., both other-gender peers and peers who differ in racial status) over one semester’s time,” Xiao told PsyPost. “This is likely due to the importance and salience of gender in children’s lives.”

When the researchers flipped the analysis—looking to see if interracial friendships led to greater kindness toward peers of another gender—they found more limited evidence. While children with friends of a different racial status were initially more likely to show prosocial behavior toward other-gender peers, this effect disappeared when accounting for how many other-gender friends the children already had. In other words, the secondary transfer effect was stronger when it originated from gender-based friendships, rather than race-based ones.

The study also explored whether these effects varied by the child’s own gender or racial status. Contrary to some expectations, the benefits of cross-gender and cross-racial friendships for prosocial behavior appeared to apply broadly across groups. One exception was that the transfer effect from interracial friendships to intergender prosocial behavior was more apparent among racially minoritized children than among White children. However, this pattern did not hold when more stringent statistical controls were applied.

“It was surprising that for BIPOC students, but not White students, having more friends who are of different racial status benefited children’s prosocial behavior toward other-gender peers over time,” Xiao explained. “However, this finding was mainly driven by who the friends are—a person who is different in racial status may be similar to the participating child in their gender, for example. This might be why when we also considered children’s other-gender friendships in the analyses, we no longer observed such relations.”

The researchers acknowledged limitations in the study’s sample and design. The children were from a specific region of the United States, and the study grouped together all minoritized racial identities, which may obscure important differences among children from distinct racial and ethnic backgrounds. Moreover, while peer nominations offer a useful snapshot of children’s social dynamics, they cannot always capture the depth or quality of a friendship.

Despite these limitations, the study points to promising directions for future research and intervention. The authors note that middle to late childhood is a period when children’s social attitudes are still forming and may be more open to change.

“I plan to examine the developmental predictors (e.g., parents, friends) of youth’s prosocial behavior toward various individuals around them,” Xiao said. “I am also interested in understanding the benefits of such prosocial behavior—in addition to benefiting others. My long-term goals are to generate applied solutions to promote such kindness and, more broadly, youth’s psychosocial well-being.”

The study, “A Longitudinal Examination of Children’s Friendships Across Racial Status and Gender and Their Intergroup Prosocial Behavior,” was authored by Sonya Xinyue Xiao, Haining Ren, May Ling Halim, Carol Lynn Martin, Dawn DeLay, Richard A. Fabes, Laura D. Hanish, and Krista Oswalt.