Social Reasoning, Subjective Group Dynamics, and Children's Evaluations of Exclusion

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Research has shown that being excluded from social groups is endemic to peer interactions, relationships, and groups from early childhood through adulthood. In fact, exclusion constitutes a basic feature of group dynamics that derives from the processes underlying the development and maintenance of social groups. To preserve one's group identity, however, individuals will often exclude others who do not fit the group expectations. While developing a group identity is adaptive, exclusion based on expectations about group norms can lead to prejudicial and discriminatory outcomes. How does this process emerge in childhood? While prior research on moral reasoning has demonstrated that children evaluate exclusion from groups as wrong and unfair, other findings indicate that children display ingroup favoritism and outgroup bias in intergroup dyadic contexts. These discrepant perspectives on group inclusion and exclusion will be investigated by drawing on two complementary theoretical models in developmental social cognition. First, social cognitive domain research has generated findings regarding children's social and moral norms, and has documented the norms children use to include and exclude others and evaluate the 'act' of exclusion. Second, developmental subjective group dynamics research has documented relationships between group identity, group loyalty, and deviant norms used in group interactions, measuring judgments regarding children's evaluations of the 'target' of exclusion. The current research project will investigate how acts and targets of exclusion are evaluated in the context of intragroup and intergroup peer dynamics. Do children prefer an outgroup member (likeability of the target) who espouses a moral norm (evaluation of the act) over an ingroup member who rejects a moral norm? How do judgments about act/target relationships vary as a function of the type of norm, the age of the child, the target of exclusion, and other variables? These questions will be addressed by conducting three empirical studies in which children and adolescents at 9 and 13 years of age will be interviewed and surveyed. Three targets will serve as the focus for each study: gender, race/ethnicity, and school affiliation. A set of measures to be implemented includes children's evaluations of the act of exclusion and inclusion, favorability of the deviant target, evaluation of ingroup/outgroup relationships, and use of social and moral reasoning. These measures will be analyzed with respect to the group identity, age, gender, and ethnicity of the participants as well as to the type of social norms and group loyalty norms presented to participants for their evaluations.The broader impact of this research lies with understanding the origins of inclusion and exclusion, which reflect the foundations of moral reasoning as well as prejudice and stereotypes. When exclusion based on prejudice and stereotypes manifests in the workforce, productivity as well as positive social relationships are at risk for tension and disruption. By adulthood, biases and stereotypes are deeply entrenched and difficult to change. Thus, successful intervention must be implemented in childhood and adolescence when attitudes about ingroups and outgroups in the form of inclusion and exclusion are emerging. The basic research to be derived from this project will be disseminated to educational and media outlets as well as to educators, psychologists, social scientists, and professionals working with children and adolescents. One anticipated outcome of this project is to help address societal concerns regarding prejudice through facilitating inclusive perspectives based on fairness in the context of group dynamics and peer interactions in childhood and adolescence.