Societies progress and, as they do so, people increasingly encounter new and different types of social groups. Young people can benefit from the opportunities this brings but must also face the challenges that arise from grappling with growing and new forms of diversity. Young people's experiences of this diversity, the context in which they are socialised, and their reactions to it, have important implications for future generations. These implications and the questions they present go to the heart of social, developmental, community, and applied psychology. Indeed, understanding how children and adolescents negotiate shifting patterns of diversity to become productive, competent, and moral social actors is a key challenge for those concerned with equality, opportunity, education, social justice, and inclusion.This special issue brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from social, developmental, and applied psychological research that examines how diversity shapes our social psychology and how we respond to it. The papers focus on understanding the experiences of children and adolescents and outlining the causes and consequences of these experiences for social development. Together, they address key theories and themes within applied, social, and developmental psychology. This special issue offers a state-of-the-art collection of work in an important and emerging field of study in the social sciences, identifying existing knowledge and suggesting a road-map for future work where psychology can frame, inform, and address issues of growing societal and moral importance.
| A SOCIAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY OF DIVERSITYDifference, in its social and interpersonal forms, has long been a topic of interest for social psychology. However, our lives, our children's lives and those of future generations are increasingly marked by diversity (for a discussion of essentialism, intersectionality, and terminology here, see Brah, 1991). Demography suggests we are entering an age of increased societal diversity. For instance, in the UK, by 2056, racial and ethnic minorities are predicted to form one third of the total population (Coleman, 2010). Across Europe, recent years have seen a steady rise in the number of immigrants, and children and adolescents born to immigrant parents (OECD/European Union, 2015, see Martiny, Froehlich, Deaux & Mok 2017). And diversity extends across social categories to include ethnicity and race, religion, gender, disability, and many other areas. In order to anticipate the changes and consequences of these shifts in societal dynamics and constitution, psychology needs to understand young people's experience of diversity, how they are shaped by it and respond to it.Research in social and developmental psychology has articulated how understanding membership of our own and others' groups is an important social skill and an important psychological process. Intergroup contact research has demonstrated the impact of diversity on adults' and children's attitudes, emotions, and behaviours (e.g., P...