Asian American youth’s inclusion decisions were investigated in cross-ethnic peer contexts (Asian and non-Asian). Ten-, 13-, and 16-year-old participants ( N = 134), enrolled in U.S. schools, decided whether to include a same-ethnic peer with different interests or a different-ethnic peer with similar interests. Findings showed that with age, participants more frequently included a peer who shared interests even when this peer was not of the same ethnicity. Participants expected their peer groups to be equally inclusive of others of both ethnic backgrounds, and expected that in-group parents would be less inclusive of cross-ethnic peers. In addition, adolescents expected parents to have prejudicial attitudes about ethnic out-group members. Views about peer group and in-group parents’ inclusivity diverged from adolescents’ own inclusivity. These findings point to areas for intervention regarding the promotion of cross-group friendships and the reduction of prejudice.

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Young children are sensitive to the importance of apologies, yet little is known about when and why parents prompt apologies from children. We examined these issues with parents of 3-10-year-old children (N = 483). Parents judged it to be important for children to apologize following both intentional and accidental morally-relevant transgressions, and they anticipated prompting apologies in both contexts, showing an ‘outcome bias’ (i.e., a concern for the outcomes of children’s transgressions rather than for their underlying intentions). Parents viewed apologies as less important after children’s breaches of social convention; parents recognized differences between social domains in their responses to children’s transgressions. Irrespective of parenting style, parents were influenced in similar fashion by particular combinations of transgressions and victims, though permissive parents were least likely to anticipate prompting apologies. Parents endorsed different reasons for prompting apologies as a function of transgression type, suggesting that they attend to key features of their children’s transgressions when deciding when to prompt apologies.

Previous research in the United States has revealed that children’s and adolescents’ understandings of social convention go through a developmental trajectory that includes an early adolescent phase “negating” the importance of convention. This study examined whether this developmental pattern would generalize to children and adolescents from the more traditional East Asian culture of Korea. Specifically, among U.S. samples, children in middle childhood have an understanding of conventions based on a concrete understanding of social hierarchy; early adolescents “negate” their prior understandings and view conventions as “merely” the dictates of authority; and in middle adolescence, U.S. samples establish an affirmation of convention as constituent elements of a social system structured by shared norms. Our hypotheses were that Korean children would not exhibit the negation phase associated with early adolescence and might develop an understanding of the societal function of convention earlier than U.S. samples. To examine this, interviews were conducted using culturally appropriate situations with 64 Korean children and adolescents in three age groups of 10 to 11 years ( Mage = 10.1 years), 12 to 13 years ( Mage = 13.2 years), and 15 to 16 years ( Mage = 15.8 years). Findings revealed that, contrary to our expectations, Korean children go through the same developmental sequence of concepts about convention as observed with children in the United States. This implies that the developmental trajectories of understandings of the functions of social convention can be generalized to children in traditional East Asian cultural settings.

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