Poster #68 - Gender, age, and group norms: How do they relate to adolescents' evaluations of intergroup exclusion?

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Integrative Statement

Intergroup exclusion is a prevalent form of discriminatory peer exclusion in adolescence that targets individuals based on their group membership and can occur across multiple contexts (e.g., peer, home). The social reasoning developmental (SRD) perspective (Rutland et al., 2010) asserts that societal concerns (e.g., group norms, stereotypes) and moral principles influence evaluations of intergroup exclusion. These evaluations—judgments and justifications—directly relate to how youth experience and respond to victimization like intergroup exclusion (Brenick & Halgunseth, 2017). Prior research, has demonstrated that individuals typically reject intergroup exclusion based on the moral concerns of unfairness and wrongfulness of discrimination, but accept it based on societal concerns such as group norms and stereotypes (Rutland & Killen, 2015). Family and peers serve as two proximal influences of group norms during adolescence, and are influential in shaping youths’ evaluations of intergroup relations. However, these influences may impact youth differently across age and by gender; peer influence peaks at mid-adolescence, and males appeal more to their peers than females (Berndt, 1979). To date, no study has addressed the roles of grade and gender in the realtinos between of peer- and parent outgroup norms (peer/parentONs) and Jewish-American youths’ evaluations of intergroup exclusion.

241 Jewish-American 9th-graders (M(SD)Age=14.18(0.42)) and 12th-graders (M(SD)Age=17.21(0.43)) participated in the current study. Surveys assessed how good or bad (1=very bad, 6=very good) participants judged it to be—and why—for a Jewish-American youth to exclude an Arab/outgroup youth from a peer (friend get-together) or home (family party) context when it was explicitly because the peer was Arab. Participants then provided open-ended responses to justify their judgments; frequency of appeals to societal and moral justifications was assessed. Participants also reported how positive or negative their peerONs and parentONs were toward the Arab outgroup (see Table 1 note).

Hierarchical linear regressions (see Table 1 for predictors) yielded significant main effects of gender, grade, peerONs, and parentONs—in the relevant contexts—for exclusion judgments. For the justification analyses, significant effects emerged only for societal justifications in the home context (Table 1). Most importantly, while no gender interactions were found, multiple parentONs by grade interactions emerged in the home context for judgments and justifications, showing that, for 9th graders, positive parentONs were associated with more rejecting judgments of and decreased use of societal reasoning to justify group-based exclusion. However, these relations were not significant for 12th graders. Additionally, in the home context, peerONs by parentONs interactions indicated that, even when parentONs were negative toward the outgroup, having positive peerONs was associated with more rejecting judgments of group-based exclusion particularly based on societal justification.

These findings suggest that the socialization of intergroup attitudes can impact youth differently across adolescence, but seemingly not by gender. Younger adolescents appear to be more strongly influenced by their parents’ norms toward outgroups than older adolescents, whereas all adolescents were strongly influenced by peer outgroup norms. Implications for youth prejudice-reduction efforts in multiple contexts will be discussed.

Authors

• Daniell Carvalheiro, University of Connecticut
  Presenting Author

• Samantha Lawrence, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emily Karr, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alaina Brenick, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author