Previous research has demonstrated that children prefer to associate with people who eat conventional foods, foods normative to them and their culture and group membership, versus unconventional foods. Foods from other countries appear to be unconventional to some people due to the fact that they are not common foods people in their own country eat or see, thus creating the idea of “ingroup” and “outgroup” members. Because of this, the unconventional foods are associated with these outgroup members and believed to be eaten by them.

Additionally, research has demonstrated that one’s national group membership is a meaningful fact about a person; children are able to identify features most closely related with their national group at a very early age. In the present study, we investigate whether the children we tested believe that children from other countries eat distinctly different foods than those from their own country. These children were presented with two children, a child from the United States and a child from Vanuatu, which is unfamiliar to them. They were then shown two foods, one familiar and one unfamiliar, and were asked to match the person to the foods they thought the person ate. We anticipate that the children will find the American foods more familiar than the unfamiliar foreign foods. Because of this, we believe the children will pair children from the United States with foods that are common in the United States and will pair children from Vanuatu with the foreign foods. Studying these children can help to identify how early in life one begins to form a sense of identity that can lead to biases which can allow us to formulate interventions to reduce the likelihood of negative attitudes toward people of different nationalities, race, and ethnicity.