The Effect of Group Identity on Children’s Inter-Group Attitudes

• In Event: The effect of information in the intergroup context on children's attitudes, behavior, and self-efficacy

Abstract

Social categorization has implications for how people think about themselves, ingroup members, and outgroup members, often leading to intergroup bias (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2010). When group identity is highlighted, perceived differences between ingroup and outgroup members become even larger, exacerbating the bias (Voci, 2006). One way to weaken the bias is by highlighting a Common Group Identity (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000). The aim of the present research was to investigate the effect of ethnic-national identity on intergroup attitudes among Arab children growing up in Israel. In particular, our main questions were how does highlighting one’s ingroup, outgroup, or common-group identity affect children’s intergroup attitudes. We adopted a measure developed by Buttelman & Bohm (2014) that also allowed to separately assess ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation.
The study included 136 Israeli Arab Muslim children, distributed across two age groups: kindergarteners and 5th graders. The study included two main phases. In the “priming” phase, children were exposed to one of four types of stories, each describing a city and its residents, and highlighting a different group identity; namely, the participants’ ethno-religious ingroup identity (Arab Muslims), the salient ethno-religious outgroup identity (Jews), and the common national identity (Israelis). A fourth story served as control and did not emphasize any group identity. In the second phase, children were shown pictures of positively (e.g., turtle) and negatively (e.g., snake) valenced animals – one at a time – and were asked to “release” the animals to an ingroup city, an outgroup city, or a zoo (neutral location). We aggregated the allocation decisions of the 15 positive and 15 negative animals separately, such that each child had a positive attitudes score (0-15) – manifesting ingroup favoritism, and a negative attitudes score (0-15) – manifesting outgroup derogation, to each target location (ingroup city, outgroup city, and zoo). Our main hypothesis was that children in the common identity condition would exhibit the least intergroup bias.
The main results revealed different patterns depending on age groups and animal valence. Kindergarteners (Figure 1), by default manifested ingroup favoritism, but highlighting the common identity significantly diminished this bias. Kindergarteners did not manifest outgroup derogation by default, but highlighting the outgroup identity unleashed it. In turn, 5th graders (Figure 2) did not manifest ingroup favoritism by default, but highlighting the ingroup identity promoted it. 5th graders did manifest outgroup derogation by default, and highlighting a common identity tempered it.
This study is the first to directly test how highlighting ethnic-national identities affects children’s attitudes toward groups – doing so among Arab Israeli children. We are currently replicating it among majority (Jewish) children in Israel. The results so far reveal an interesting developmental dynamic between intergroup motivations and ethnic identities. They further show that highlighting a common group identity positively, though differentially, affects kindergarteners’ and 5th graders’ intergroup attitudes – a finding that firmly grounds such a strategy as an effective intervention for these age groups, even in such a conflictual context.

Authors

• Yara Nassir, Bar-Ilan university
  Presenting Author

• Gil Diesendruck, Bar Ilan University
  Non-Presenting Author