“How Prejudice develop across childhood and what interventions can help to negate this?”
During 2016 lots of political and social changes took place. These changes made people discuss different social topics and reconsider values. One of the things mostly discussed is Prejudice. This essay attempts to explain how Prejudice develops through childhood. In order to do so Theories such as the Social Identity Theory (SIT), the Social Identity Development Theory (SIDT), and the Sociocognitive Theory (SC) are going to be discussed. Afterwards a couple of interventions such as the intergroup contact model are discussed. Before our attempt starts, we need to define Prejudice. In this essay prejudiced behaviour is going to be defined as Brown (2010) defined it as a group of feelings and different behaviour expressed, obviously or not, for members of other groups and which harm or show dislike for those members.
People are able to discriminate male pictures from female picture from the age of five month (Fagan and Shepherd, 1982; Fagan and Singer, 1979). By three years old they are able to label themselves and the others according to their gender (Weinraub et.al. 1984). From researches where children are asked to point to White and Black dolls we know that Ethnic awareness is present in preschool children (Clark & Clark, 1947). Further research supporting category awareness has been conducted by Horowitz and Horowitz (1938), where has been used more than skin colour characteristics (the White and Black doll),ethnic, gender, age and socioeconical features where combined in five different pictures showed to White Americans and made possible to show which feature, category is more salient to them. Also, preschool children and grade school children show preference towards their own sex when asked who they want to play with (Gulko, 1985, Serbin and Sprafkin 1986) and evaluate in a more positive way their own sex compared to the opposite sex (Powlishta 1990a, Martin, 1989).
Social Identity Theory explains prejudice through social comparisons (SIT, Tajfel and Turner, 1979). According to SIT attitudes and behaviour of someone towards others, depends on his will to be part of a higher social status group, through which his own self-esteem can be enriched. This theory is supported by studies like Brown’s, 1995 and Abrams’, 1988. Nesdale and Flesser conducted a research, supporting SIT, 2001. In this research took part 258 children, five year old and 8 year old. They were randomly teamed according to social status (their drawing ability), social mobility (their belief if it was possible to change team) and social change (the probability of further positive qualities). The results supported SIT. The in-group situation in which people find themselves in influences their perception and attitudes toward in-group and out-group members. Specifically, not only children with higher social status and mobility showed greater liking for in-group and out-group members than those in lower social status and mobility, but also they felt more similar to others. Furthermore, children belonging to lower status expressed their will to change group more than those in higher status. In addition to SIT, this research made clear that from five years old children consider status differences between their group and the others.
SIDT theory comes to add things to SIT, with Nesdale claiming that when the in-group is not threatened or treated in a negative way from the out-group, then there is no prejudice or discrimination towards it (1999b). Nesdale pointed out four phases of development. First stage is called ‘Undifferentiated’ and it takes part before the 3 first years. The second is ‘Ethnic Awareness’, approximately at three years old, when children indentify similarities with others and categorise themselves according to them (Nesdale, 2008). Third stage is the ‘Ethnic Preference’ at around five years old. At this stage the child knows that is a member of a specific ethnic group (Turner et al, 1987). According to Aboud ethnic self-identification shows a preference for a particular in-group without showing dislike for the out-group. Finally, the fourth stage of development is the ‘Ethnic Prejudice’ when in-group preference turns to out- group hostility. This stage does not always occur, and if it does, according to SIDT its not possible to develop before six years old. It is important to clarify that during this stage the out-group members are not less liked compared to the in-group members but they are disliked or hated from the in-group. Prejudice means at this stage that instead of children focusing on their groups and friendship they focus on discriminating minorities whenever possible. A research, whose findings agrees with SIDT was conducted and included 197 Anglo-Australian children seven and nine year old (Nesdale, Maass et al.). These children’s groups either had an inclusion norm or an exclusion norm. It was found that Prejudice is created and accepted more under exclusion norms and when the in-group is threatened from the out-group. Ojola and Nesdale in 2004 showed that bullying was more accepted and approved when it was consistent with in-groups norms and when out-group threatened the in-group. It also found that age influences ethnic attitudes. Specifically, when there was an inclusion norm in in-groups the seven year old liked the out-group but when the norm was still inclusion and out-group threatened them they would dislike the out-group. When the norm was exclusion the seven year olds children would dislike the out-group, even if there was no threat. However, nine year olds children would show a dislike for the out-group members only when there was an exclusion norm and at the same time they felt threatened from the out-group. Although SIDT supports that when inclusion norm and out-group threat co-exist the attitudes depends from the age, it cannot sufficiently explain it.
A theory that can explain the age relation with the attitudes could be the Sociocognitive Theory (ST; Aboud, 1988). According to ST the majority of children display ethnic or racial prejudice by the age of seven. After that age attitudes become more positive for the out-group. Children’s attitudes for the out-group depend on two developmental sequences. The first contains the process through which children experience the world at a particular time. At first children’s preferences are based on physical characteristics such as body weight and skin colour, as the children still experience the world through fear for the unknown and attachment for the familiar (Nesdale, 2000). Approximately at seven years old the operational thinking starts taking place (Flavell, 1963) where the children start understanding each other individually rather than based on their group characteristics and preferences. Following this stage, comes the sequence in which the children’s focus of attention changes. Children after seven years old focus on categories of people where individuals are seen as members of groups, and at the same time those group members are treated as individuals who are liked or not depending on their own individual characteristics. So, Aboud supported that even though group based prejudice reaches a high level at approximately seven years old, declines after that age as children’s sociocognitive abilities develop and they are able to attribute characteristics individuals rather than based on groups.
Having discussed some points of how prejudice develops, it’s time to discuss about some of the interventions trying to negate prejudice. We do live in a country where most of the nurseries accept multicultural children and are encouraged to know and celebrate different cultural celebrations from a young age. Also, exchange of students across different countries is a trend the last years. These contain characteristics of Allport’s theory of in-group contact (1954). Allport suggested that prejudice could be reduced if contact between members of different groups took place, under certain circumstances. By circumstances Allport meant significant conditions. Those conditions are equal status, intergroup cooperation, common goals and support by social and institutional authorities. It is important to note that intergroup cooperation needs to have a successful outcome in order to lead to positive attitudes. When outcome is not successful then the liking for out groups members is going to be minimised (Worchel et al 1977). A good example of contact is the one of contacts in a school in Jerusalem, which attended children from both Israeli and Palestinian communities. Lessons were taught in both languages and three different faiths were accepted. As presented in the Independent 2007 children confessed that made friends from different cultures and that they would interact out of school as well. However, even though they said that interacted out of school as well there was no way of measuring interactions out of school.
Because it is difficult to generalise the results of the contact hypothesis, contact hypothesis has been used over the years and developed in ways that physical direct contact is not required, but a psychologically representation of it is required and possessed (Crisp and Turner, 2009). Specifically, the capability of observing or knowing that an in-group member contacts closely and positively an out-group member can help transforming intergroup attitudes in positive ones. By changing the in-group norm and showing that is permitted and acceptable to be friends with an out-group member it can actually reduce prejudice. This is what Wright (1997) called extended contact. Very useful is as well the imaginary contact as direct contact is not always possible and it negates the possibility of negative feelings related to the avoidance of contacting different groups and cultures (Plant and Devine, 2003, Stephan and Stephan, 1985). Research has shown that imagined contact improves not only the relationship in the in-group but also the attitudes toward the out-group (Turner, Crisp, et al, 2007), enhance in-groups belief that out-group members can also have positive traits (Stathi and Crisp, 2008).
Just by imagining coming in contact with different people can help negate prejudice. Imaginary contact seems possible to take place anywhere by anyone since does not require the individual to know someone that interacts with an out-group member or it does not require the individual himself to interact with an out-group member.
In education there are, also, other important interventions that show a difference in reducing prejudice in childhood. One of those interventions is the Cooperative Learning inspired from Social Independence Theory of Deutsch (1949) and mostly known from the Jigsaw Classroom of Eliot Aronson (1978). Teachers in Cooperative Learning design the lessons so the children can engage with each other, teach and learn from each other. It reminds a jigsaw as students try to work together in order to solve a puzzle. Each one of them will have the responsibility for one part of the lesson eg finding resources while another one will have to search for previous examples and they are asked to collect it all together. According to researches cooperative learning seems to affect positively relationship between the groups and helpfulness (Johnson and Johnson, 1989, Roseth et al. 2008). Furthermore Reading interventions has taken place in schools. A common research is that of Cameron and Rutland (2006) where randomly 253 English schoolchildren from the age of five to eleven were assigned to listen to stories about two friends, a disabled one and a non disabled one, that went through different adventures together. It is interesting that the results showed the effect of the extended contact once more where different relationships between in-group members and out-group members are perceived as acceptable and natural (Wright et al 1997).