No abstract

Intergroup attitudes were assessed in African‐American (N=70) and non‐African‐American minority (N=80) children, evenly divided by gender, in first (M=6.5 years old) and fourth (M=9.6 years old) grades attending mixed‐ethnicity public schools in a suburban area of a large mid‐Atlantic city in the USA. Children were interviewed to test hypotheses about implicit racial biases, perceptions of similarity between peer dyads, and judgments about cross‐race friendships. Implicit racial biases emerged when children evaluated ambiguous picture cards, with children viewing a White child as more likely to be a transgressor than a Black child in certain situations. There were no racial biases when evaluating potential cross‐race friendship (it was judged to be feasible); nor was there any evidence of an outgroup homogeneity effect. Children who used ethnicity as a reason for judging peers to be similar, however, were less likely to judge that the cross‐race dyads could be friends. The findings indicate the ways in which minority children's judgments about the majority and their perceptions of similarity between peer dyads influence their interpretations of peer interactions.

No abstract

The present study investigated children's and adolescents' social reasoning about parenting roles in the home, specifically 'second-shift parenting' by a mother or father. Surveys were administered to children (age 10) and adolescents (age 13), nearly evenly divided by gender (N= 200) in which two hypothetical scenarios were evaluated. Participants were asked to evaluate and justify second-shift parenting arrangements for the family overall, for the parent in the role, and for the child in the family. Results showed that participants expected mothers rather than fathers to take on the second-shift role, and second-shift parenting was evaluated as more unfair for fathers than for mothers. Personal choice reasoning was used for justifying arrangements for the second-shift parent and moral reasoning was used for justifying arrangements for the child. Social reasoning about the context of parental caretaking roles was multifaceted and varied by age and gender of participant more so than by self-reported personal family arrangements.

No abstract