Abstract
Prejudice and bias emerge in childhood. Research has shown that children’s prejudice against outgroup members is multifaceted, ranging from implicit biases to overtly explicit biases, such as racial slurs. To fully understand the developmental roots of prejudicial attitudes, it is necessary to investigate the full spectrum of prejudice and the processes that inhibit or reduce prejudice. This chapter reviews research on children’s evaluations of social inclusion and exclusion when based on gender, race, and wealth status, as well as the conditions under which children will challenge exclusionary behavior. We also review research on how children’s attributions of intentions toward members of outgroups reveal biases that indirectly lead to unequal access to resources and opportunities. We draw on the social reasoning developmental model to interpret children’s thinking about these forms of social encounters, and we assert that children often struggle between doing what’s fair and what serves to enhance their affiliation with their social ingroups. Understanding how prejudice emerges, and its consequences for children who are the recipient as well as the perpetrator, provides valuable information for creating programs to reduce bias. Indeed, creating a means to facilitate the integration of peer relationships across group categories and reduce prejudice serves to address the roots of social inequality. Ultimately, the goal of evidence-based intervention is to decrease the harmful psychological attitudes that perpetuate exclusion and discrimination in childhood.
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Acknowledgments
We thank member of the Social and Moral Development Lab for discussions about the research studies reported in this chapter. The first author was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (DGE 1322106); the second author was supported by a University of Maryland Graduate Fellowship; and the third author was supported by a National Science Foundation Grant (BCS 1728918).
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Burkholder, A.R., D’Esterre, A.P., Killen, M. (2019). Intergroup Relationships, Context, and Prejudice in Childhood. In: Fitzgerald, H.E., Johnson, D.J., Qin, D.B., Villarruel, F.A., Norder, J. (eds) Handbook of Children and Prejudice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12228-7_6
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