2-112 - Words Can Hurt: Dangers of Testimony in Leading Children to Negatively Evaluate Others

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Intergroup biases develop early and remain stable across development (e.g., Dunham et al., 2008). Nevertheless, the content of these attitudes are subject to sociocultural modification (e.g., Nesdale & Lawson, 2011). In their everyday lives, children are frequently exposed to testimony that explicitly or implicitly condemns counter-normative actions or entire social groups. How do children deal with this linguistic input, and what factors determine whether they will be swayed to negatively evaluate others? The papers in this symposium provide several new answers to this question. Paper #1 finds that diverse forms of testimony invoking various moral emotions and moral principles can lead children to negatively evaluate members of alien groups for engaging in harmless actions, and shows that these judgments persist for several months. Paper #2 demonstrates that negative testimony about novel groups can lead to a strong adoption of outgroup bias, but that this is primarily the case for older but not younger children and for direct rather than indirect testimony. Paper #3 examines the content of parent-child conversations about within-race and cross-race moral interactions and finds that parents are less prone to reference moral rules and use generics when engaging in conversations about individuals of differing races, thus suggesting a much more subtle linguistic influence on children’s negative social evaluations of outgroups. Our discussant, a leading expert on the role of cultural input in children’s intergroup biases, will synthesize these talks and indicate their comprehensive theoretical and practical implications, while bringing his own research to bear on these issues.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Joshua Rottman, Franklin and Marshall College

Discussant

• Gil Diesendruck, Bar Ilan University

Individual Presentations

• The impact of emotional and principled testimony on children’s moralization of novel actions - Presenting Author: Joshua Rottman, Franklin and Marshall College; Liane Young, Boston College; Deb Kelemen, Boston University

• Effects of direct and overheard testimony on children’s evaluations of novel social groups - Presenting Author: Jonathan D. Lane, Vanderbilt University; Emily B. Conder, Vanderbilt University; Joshua Rottman, Franklin and Marshall College

• Parental language subtly communicates that different moral standards govern inter-group and intra-group interactions - Presenting Author: Marjorie Rhodes, New York University; Lisa Chalik, Yale University