Children's experiences and judgments about group exclusion and inclusion

Like the cool kids? The role of popular classmates in the development of anti-immigrant attitudes in adolescence

While classmates have been identified as important socializing agents in relation to adolescents’ prejudice, there is limited understanding of how popularity status plays into classroom transmission of prejudicial attitudes. Drawing on theories of social influence, we used a three-wave panel of Swedish adolescents ( N = 941, aged 13–15) to examine the role of sociometric and prestige popular classmates in the development of adolescents’ anti-immigrant attitudes. Multilevel repeated measurement models revealed positive relationships between popular and individual prejudice; between sociometric prejudice and the level and rate of change; and between prestige prejudice and wave-to-wave shifts in individual prejudice. Overall, we found sociometrically popular classmates to be more influential in relation to adolescents’ prejudice. Additionally, we found the effect of sociometric prejudice to be more pronounced if political issues were frequently discussed in the classroom.

The development of children's epistemic beliefs across the early years of elementary school

BACKGROUND

A growing body of research shows that the beliefs we hold about the nature of knowing and knowledge (epistemic beliefs) may mediate moral reasoning. However, a limitation of much of the research in the area of epistemic beliefs is the lack of a longitudinal approach.

AIMS

The study investigated longitudinal changes in Australian elementary school children's beliefs about knowing and knowledge (epistemic beliefs) across three judgement domains (personal taste, ambiguous facts, and moral values).

SAMPLE

The participants in this longitudinal study were tracked from Year 1 through to Year 3 of primary school. In Year 1, there were 169 participants (83 boys, 86 girls) aged 6-7 years (M = 6.7, SD = 0.32). In Year 2, there were 156 participants (79 boys, 77 girls), and in Year 3, there were 129 participants (65 boys, 64 girls).

METHODS

Using vignettes that reflected each of the three judgement domains, children were interviewed about the beliefs held by two puppet characters. The interviews took place each year across the early years of elementary education in Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3.

RESULTS

Findings revealed that children's epistemic beliefs in each of the judgement domains became more subjectivist over time but that the age at which this occurred differed according to the judgement domain in question.

CONCLUSIONS

We argue that it is important for teachers to pay attention to children's beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing in the process of scaffolding their reasoning about moral values for active citizenship.

Moral judgments and emotions: adolescents' evaluations in intergroup social exclusion contexts

This article examines children's moral judgments and emotional evaluations in the context of social exclusion. As they age, children and adolescents face increasingly complex situations in which group membership and allegiance are in opposition with morally relevant decisions, such as the exclusion of an individual from a group. While adolescents are often characterized as being conformists to group norms, research demonstrates that their judgments about fairness, justice, and rights can supersede negative or exclusive norms espoused by groups. Additionally, young people's emotional evaluations of members who do not conform to a group norm are in concert with these fairness judgments. Implications for social and moral development will be discussed in the context of empirical findings.

Do Korean Immigrant Adolescents Experience Stress-Related Growth During Stressful Intergroup Contact and Acculturation?

Asian immigrant adolescents have a difficult time adapting to unfamiliar customs and cultural values as well as interacting with other ethnic groups. During intergroup contacts and acculturation, Asian immigrant adolescents have negative experiences such as discrimination experiences, intergroup anxiety, interracial tension, and limited social support. In spite of such stressful and negative life experiences, some research has shown that individuals may develop the ability to thrive or grow from stressful life events. Using grounded theory, we explored the characteristics of positive psychological changes that occurred as the result of stressful intergroup contacts and acculturation from the perspective of Korean immigrant adolescents. We captured three main themes related to stress-related growth: (a) psychological thriving, (b) cultural and ethnic understandings, and (c) culturally attuned relationships. This finding implies that stressful intergroup contacts and acculturation provide an opportunity in which Korean immigrant adolescents develop coping abilities and enhance a sense of personal growth.

Development of intra- and intergroup judgments in the context of moral and social-conventional norms

Children and adolescents evaluated group inclusion and exclusion in the context of generic and group-specific norms involving morality and social conventions. Participants (N = 381), aged 9.5 and 13.5 years, judged an in-group member's decision to deviate from the norms of the group, whom to include, and whether their personal preference was the same as what they expected a group should do. Deviating from in-group moral norms about unequal allocation of resources was viewed more positively than deviating from conventional norms about nontraditional dress codes. With age, participants gave priority to group-specific norms and differentiated what the group should do from their own preference about the group's decision, revealing a developmental picture about children's complex understanding of group dynamics and group norms.

African American and European American children in diverse elementary classrooms: social integration, social status, and social behavior

With a sample of African American and European American 3rd- and 4th-grade children (N = 486, ages 8-11 years), this study examined classroom ethnic composition, peer social status (i.e., social preference and perceived popularity as nominated by same- and cross-ethnicity peers), and patterns of ethnic segregation (i.e., friendship, peer group, and cross-ethnicity dislike). African American--but not European American--children had more segregated relationships and were more disliked by cross-ethnicity peers when they had fewer same-ethnicity classmates. African American children's segregation was positively associated with same-ethnicity social preference and perceived popularity and with cross-ethnicity perceived popularity. European American children's segregation was positively associated with same-ethnicity social preference but negatively associated with cross-ethnicity social preference and perceived popularity.

Tolerance of practices by Muslim actors: an integrative social-developmental perspective

Using social-cognitive domain theory and social identity theory, tolerance judgments of practices by Muslim actors among Dutch adolescents (12-17) were investigated. The findings for Study 1 (N=180) demonstrated that participants evaluated 4 practices using different types of reasons: personal, social-conventional, and moral. In Study 2 (N=970), participants were more tolerant of acts considered to be a personal issue than of acts that pertained to moral issues (social-conventional acts were in the middle). Furthermore, participants were more tolerant of the particular practices than of campaigns for public support of co-Muslims for these practices. Level of education, in-group identification, and multiculturalism had much weaker effects in the moral than in the other domains. Age was negatively related to tolerance.

Intergroup contact and evaluations of race-based exclusion in urban minority children and adolescents

There is a dearth of published research on the role of intergroup contact on urban US ethnic minority children's and adolescents' evaluations of racial exclusion. The current investigation examined these issues in a sample of low-income minority 4th, 7th, and 10th grade (N = 129, 60% female) African American and Latino/a students attending predominately racial and ethnic minority US urban public schools. Using individual interviews, participants were presented with scenarios depicting three contexts of interracial peer exclusion (lunch at school, a sleepover party, and a school dance). Novel findings were that intergroup contact was significantly related to low-income urban ethnic minority youth's evaluations of the wrongfulness of race-based exclusion and their awareness of the use of stereotypes to justify racial exclusion. Further, significant interactions involving intergroup contact, context, age, and gender were also found. Findings illustrated the importance of intergroup contact for ethnic minority students and the complexity of ethnic minority children's and adolescents' judgments and decision-making about interracial peer exclusion.

When is peer rejection justifiable?: Children's understanding across two cultures

This study investigated how Korean (N = 397) and U.S. (N = 333) children and adolescents (10 and 13 years of age) evaluated personality (aggression, shyness) and group (gender, nationality) characteristics as a basis for peer rejection in three contexts (friendship rejection, group exclusion, victimization). Overall, peer rejection based on group membership was viewed as more unfair than peer rejection based on personality traits. Children viewed friendship rejection as more legitimate than group exclusion or victimization and used more personal choice reasoning for friendship rejection than for rejection in any other context. Although there were a few cultural differences, overall, the findings provided support for the cultural generalizability of social reasoning about peer rejection.

European-American Children's and Adolescents' Evaluations of Interracial Exclusion

No research, to date, has investigated the role of ethnic school composition (and intergroup contact) on European-American youth's use of stereotypes to explain interracial discomfort in the context of peer exclusion. In this study European-American 4th, 7th and 10th grade students (N = 414), attending low and high ethnically diverse public schools (with low and high self-reports of cross-race/ethnic friendships, respectively) evaluated three contexts of interracial exclusion (at lunch time, at a school dance, and at a sleepover). In addition to age and context effects, participants enrolled in high diversity schools were less likely to use stereotypes to explain racial discomfort, more likely to view racial exclusion as wrong, and more likely to estimate that racial exclusion occurs, than were participants enrolled in low diversity schools. These findings have implications for the role of social experience on racial attitudes and judgments about exclusion.

The development of stereotyping and exclusion

This article reviews the developmental science literature on stereotyping and exclusion, with a focus on gender, race, and ethnicity. Stereotyping of others, which is defined as the attribution of traits to individuals based on group membership, is often used to justify exclusion of others in social group contexts. This review includes a focus on the links between these two constructs. Research on stereotyping and exclusion has drawn on several theoretical traditions, including social domain theory, social identity developmental theory, and subjective group dynamics theory, which are also discussed in the context of the research findings. Key findings on stereotyping include categorization and classification in relationship with decreased in-group bias, and the role of stereotypes in encoding information. Findings on exclusion include the use of available information to make judgments, preferences for in-group members who are normative and out-group members who are deviant, the increased importance, with age, of group functioning in exclusion decisions, and decreased negative evaluation of in-group members who partake in exclusionary behaviors. Though little research has explicitly studied the links between stereotyping and exclusion from groups, this review describes the current literature in both areas and suggests future directions for research. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.