Children's and Adolescents’ Evaluations of Intergroup Exclusion in Interracial and Interwealth Peer Contexts

Abstract

Children and adolescents (N = 153, ages 8–14 years, Mage = 11.46 years) predicted and evaluated peer exclusion in interwealth (high‐wealth and low‐wealth) and interracial (African American and European American) contexts. With age, participants increasingly expected high‐wealth groups to be more exclusive than low‐wealth groups, regardless of their depicted race. Furthermore, children evaluated interwealth exclusion less negatively than interracial exclusion, and children who identified as higher in wealth evaluated interwealth exclusion less negatively than did children who identified as lower in wealth. Children cited explicit negative stereotypes about high‐wealth groups in their justifications, while rarely citing stereotypes about low‐wealth groups or racial groups. Results revealed that both race and wealth are important factors that children consider when evaluating peer exclusion.

An experimental study of teachers’ evaluations regarding peer exclusion in the classroom

“…Taken together, the identified complex interplay of contextual characteristics supports the relevance of the recent call for adopting an intersectional perspective on evaluations of peer exclusion (Burkholder et al, 2020).…”

“…The SRD has also broadened the intersectional perspective on social identity (Burkholder, Elenbaas, & Killen, 2020). The intersectional perspective on social identity (Niwa, Way, & Hughes, 2014) emphasizes that identity includes not only unique effects of the target's group memberships on attitudes but also their interplay.…”

“…For example, gender and ethnic stereotypes intersect which can explain why ethnic minority boys report the highest rates of unfair treatment (Niwa et al, 2014;Seaton, Caldwell, Sellers, & Jackson, 2008). The SRD approach has adopted this perspective and broadened its focus by also including interpersonal intersections, specifically intersections between the group memberships of the excluding and the excluded students (Burkholder et al, 2020).…”

Children’s Intergroup Attitudes: Insights From Iran

“…Although Iran is racially and religiously homogenous, there may well be differences in socio‐evaluative reasoning based on income and where children live, as has been found in other countries (e.g., Caravita, Giardino, Lenzi, Salvaterra, & Antonietti, 2012; Chen, Wang, & Wang, 2009). It is also unknown whether children in wealthy Western countries emphasize social status to the same extent given recent findings suggesting that children sometimes attach negative stereotypes to upper class groups (e.g., Burkholder, Elenbaas, & Killen, 2019; Elenbaas & Killen, 2019; Horwitz & Dovidio, 2017).…”

The relations of White parents’ implicit racial attitudes to their children’s differential empathic concern toward White and Black victims

“…According to social-cognitive developmental theory (Aboud, 2008), more similarity between parents' and children's attitudes is expected as children get older because older children are more likely to internalize their parents' racial attitudes (Degner & Dalege, 2013). However, based on social identity development theory (Nesdale & Flesser, 2001), it is also possible that the link between parents' and children's racial attitudes gets weaker as children get older because children are exposed to other socializers and have more contact with diverse others (Burkholder, Elenbaas, & Killen, 2020). Consistent with this latter theory, we found that parents' IAT was associated with their children's sympa- thetic bias, particularly for younger children and children near the mean age of our sample.…”