Sticks and stones can break my bones, but ethnophaulisms can alter the portrayal of immigrants to children

An archival study examined the portrayal of ethnic immigrants to children as a function of the prevailing cognitive representation of those ethnic immigrant groups in ethnophaulisms. The complexity in ethnophaulisms (and, to a lesser degree, the valence in ethnophaulisms) predicted the portrayal of ethnic immigrant groups. Overall, ethnic immigrant groups characterized in terms of ethnophaulisms of low complexity were less frequently present in children's literature, children from these ethnic groups were described more in terms of physical appearance than in terms of personal traits, fictional child characters from those ethnic groups were portrayed with smaller heads and with lower verbal complexity, and the folksongs attributed to these groups had a more negative affective tone. The implications of these results for approaches to intergroup relations are considered.