Peer and Parental Sources of Influence Regarding Interracial and Same-Race Peer Encounters

• In Event: Ethnicity Salience and Ethnic-Racial Socialization in Different Social Contexts

Abstract

Parents and peers are significant socializing influences in children’s lives, particularly in the development of prejudice and bias. Parents often express positive or negative messages to their children about interracial interactions, which may be motivated by biases or legitimate concerns about their child facing discrimination. These messages may influence how children engage with their peers and their evaluations of racial bias they witness. At the same time, peers act as complex socializing agents and often communicate conflicting messages about group loyalty, affiliation, and perceptions of fairness in interracial contexts. Taken together, we proposed that children’s predictions of third-party interracial inclusion decisions would be differentially influenced by whether parents or peers provided socializing messages about inclusion.

The present study investigated the socializing influence of peers and parents in interracial encounters by disentangling how youth consider peer and parent messages when predicting interracial and same-race inclusion. Black and White participants (9-14 years old, N = 246) were shown two counterbalanced vignettes depicting either peers or parents expressing socialization messages about whether inclusion should occur. These vignettes portrayed one of three racial contexts: 1) interracial inclusion where White characters decided whether to include a Black peer; 2) interracial inclusion where Black characters decided whether to include a White peer; 3) same-race inclusion (matched to participant). Participants predicted the likelihood that inclusion would occur (“How likely is it that [character] will invite [peer] to [activity]”) on a six-point Likert type scale from one (not likely at all) to six (really likely). They also provided open-ended justifications for their expectations.

Overall, participants expected inclusion to be less likely in encounters with parental influences (M = 3.59, SD = 1.28) than in encounters with peer influences (M = 4.01, SD = 1.33), F(1, 234) = 18.80, p < .001, η_p^2 = .07. However, only when peer sources of influence were present, both the race of the participant and the racial composition of the peer encounter impacted participants’ predictions, F(2, 234) = 12.27, p < .001, η_p^2 = .10. As shown in Figure 1, White children and adolescents expected same-race inclusion to be more likely than interracial inclusion, while Black participants were more optimistic than their White counterparts that interracial inclusion between White characters and a Black peer would occur. Additional comparisons and the results of youth’s justifications to support their predictions will also be discussed.

These results show that while children were less optimistic about inclusion when peer encounters included parental source of influence rather than with peer sources of influence, the interracial composition of the interaction impacted children’s expectations most when peer sources of influence were present. This study suggests that developmentally appropriate interventions designed to reduce interracial exclusion in childhood may be most effective by focusing on how to combat negative peer influences, as children and adolescents may be particularly influenced by peers when making decisions about inclusion and exclusion within interracial peer encounters.

Authors

• Amanda Rose Burkholder, Furman University
  Presenting Author

• Jacquelyn Glidden, University of Maryland - College Park

• Kathryn M. Yee, University of Maryland - College Park

• Shelby Cooley

• Melanie A. Killen, University of Maryland - College Park