Developmental Issues Developmental Issues in Childhood and Youthin Childhood and YouthDevelopment of Prejudice in Children

IntroductionIntroduction Even very young children can demonstrate awareness of social categories.

Children form categories to simplify the world and free up mental resources

Children implicitly recognize differences between basic social categories without being able to verbalize those differences

Racial category awareness◦ Regardless of their own ethnicity, by age 4 or 5, children can use the racial categories Black and White correctly, and between 5 and 9 for other racial groups (Clark and Clark, 1947)

Suggests that children become aware of social categories much earlier than previously suggested (Fagan and Singer, 1979) even as young as 5-6 months

This is an awareness and is not suggesting any preference or even identification

Ethnic IdentificationEthnic IdentificationWhen do children identify with categories?Early work by Clark and Clark (1947) and Goodman (1952) use pictures or dolls and ask children variety of questions

Which one looks like you? Who would you rather play with? Which one looks nice /bad?Contemporary research offering more complex choices still retains similar patterns

White children show preference for their own ethnic group black children more ambivalent and even preference for other group (Milner,1983)

How do Children become How do Children become prejudiced?prejudiced?Various psychological explanations as to why children develop prejudicial attitudes

Is it learnt from parents? Is it socialisation in the home environment?

What about the stage of development of the child?

Do we need to consider their level of understanding and their cognitive ability?

What about the social /cultural environment of the child?

Social Learning TheorySocial Learning Theory Social Learning theories such as Bandura (1977) and Mischel (1966) provide a theoretical framework.

Explains prejudice in terms of direct reinforcement, modeling and imitation, and vicarious learning

Direct teaching of prejudice is not very common Prejudiced attitudes more often come from indirect teaching of prejudice from family and peers, and depictions of men/women/race in stereotypical roles (media/literature)

Parental Beliefs and attitudes: ‘Mother doesn’t want me to play with colored children….I play with colored children sometimes but mamma whips me..(7 year old white girl- Horowitz and Horrowitz, 1938 p.333)

But the link between attitudes of parents and children has proved to be quite weak (Davey, 1983)

Cognitive Developmental Cognitive Developmental TheoriesTheoriesCould changes in prejudice be the result of cognitive growth.

Younger children’s thinking is dominated by egocentric thought (Piaget, 1954)- how things appear

There is always the ongoing interplay between children’s mental development and their environment.

By 5-7 thinking is more developed as they are in the concrete operational stage (Piaget, 1954)

The development of prejudice involves abrupt shifts that correspond to changes in cognitive stages.

Cognitive Developmental Cognitive Developmental TheoriesTheoriesPiaget’s theory – describes the development of prejudice as shifts through:◦Egocentric thought in preoperational stage◦Sociocentric thought in concrete operations stage

◦Reciprocal thought in formal operations stage

As the nature of children’s thinking changes in each stage, so does the way they conceptualize prejudice.

Social Identity theorySocial Identity theorySocial Identity defines a group and is a social psychological analysis of explaining membership of groups (whatever that group may be) (Tajfel and Turner, 1979)

In particular intergroup discriminiation

Other Theoretical Other Theoretical ModelsModels Current ideas link prejudice in children to general cognitive social and affective models (Brown,1995)

This is to recognise that children play a role in this through their cognitive capacity (Aboud,1988:Maccoby and Jackin,1987)

3 stage model (Aboud, 1988) Up to 5 years of age – children are influences by their perception and their emotions. World is divided into categories male/femail etc

From 5 to 7 years their social understanding shifts from themselves to groups ( obvious link with school)

From 7-8 upwards children recognise that you can have individual variation within these groups. So rigid stereotypical thinking can become more flexible

How do we discourage How do we discourage prejudice in children?prejudice in children?What could we do in school or in the home to discourage prejudicial attitudes in children?