AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark were a married team of American psychologists who were active in the Civil Rights movement and are most known together for their research on black children. The Clarks were the first African Americans to obtain PhDs in psychology from Columbia University.

Detailed explanation-2: -In the 1940s, psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark designed and conducted a series of experiments known colloquially as “the doll tests” to study the psychological effects of segregation on African-American children. Drs. Clark used four dolls, identical except for color, to test children’s racial perceptions.

Detailed explanation-3: -Mamie Phipps Clark was a pathbreaking psychologist whose research helped desegregate schools in the United States. Over a three-decade career, Dr. Clark researched child development and racial prejudice in ways that not only benefitted generations of children but changed the field of psychology.

Detailed explanation-4: -The results showed the majority of black children preferred the white dolls to the black dolls. The children would say the black dolls were “bad” and the white dolls looked most like them. To the Clarks, these tests provided proof segregation gave African American children a sense of inferiority.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Clarks found that black children preferred to play with white dolls, and were more likely to describe the white dolls as the ‘nice doll’ and the black doll as the ‘bad’ doll. To help children achieve healthy racial self-identification, Clark increasingly thought that integration was the way forward.