Melanie Killen - US grants

The goal of this research is to investigate how children, adolescents, and adults make judgments about including or excluding people from activities on the basis of their group membership. As an example: Is it legitimate for an all-girl ballet club to exclude a boy who wants to join? In general, the research is designed to investigate how social knowledge, including social stereotypes, develops across childhood and into adulthood, as well as to study how and when this knowledge is brought to bear upon judgments in children and adults. This is a collaborative project designed to link a well-developed literature on social and moral reasoning from developmental psychology with conceptions of stereotypes and intergroup relations as developed by social psychologists. The research is based on the assumption that social stereotypes play a much broader role in how people think about group relations than has usually been considered by social psychologists. It is proposed that stereotypes may serve to justify social actions, in addition to influencing judgments about and behavior toward individuals. In the research, individuals will be asked to judge hypothetical scenarios in which one person excludes another person from an activity which is known to invoke stereotypes. It is expected that when principles of fairness, equity, and rights are brought to bear on such judgments, the decisions and behaviors will be non-exclusionary, and consistently so across a variety of situations. When social-conventional reasoning, including beliefs about group functioning and social stereotypes, is used as a basis of decision-making, decisions are expected to be exclusionary, group-specific, and highly contingent upon the current social context. It is anticipated that the findings of this research will provide valuable information for teachers, educators, social workers, and school psychologists who are confronted with intergroup tension in interactions among children, adolescents, and adults in a multitude of settings.

DESCRIPTION (provided by investigator): The general goal of the proposed research is to investigate the development of social reasoning about exclusion on the basis of group membership, and the extent to which this knowledge is related to contact with members of different social groups, social identity, and experiences with exclusion. Social psychologists have generated extensive research on stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, social identity, and in-group/out-group perceptions without examining the emergence, and acquisition of these phenomena. Developmental psychologists have provided a wealth of data on children's and adolescents' social and moral reasoning but have not examined reasoning about inter-group relationships, including stereotypes, discrimination, and exclusion. In this proposal, we plan to investigate several new dimensions of children's' and adolescents' social reasoning about exclusion and rights. First, we plan to examine several contexts of exclusion (friendship, peer groups, and societal institutions) not previously included in research designs. Second, we will include children from heterogeneous (mixed-ethnicity) communities and homogeneous (all-black, all-white) communities and from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Third, we will measure social and ethnic identity as they bear on exclusion judgments. Fourth, we will examine children's past history with exclusion and their judgments about rights in relation to judgments about exclusion. This integrative approach is expected to be theoretically important, and to contribute to the literature by broadening the factors and variables that contribute to judgments about inter-group relationships in morally relevant contexts. The knowledge derived from this project will help to establish the developmental benefits that accrue as a result of experiencing diverse school environments as well as to provide a means for creating intervention programs designed to ameliorate inter-group tensions and conflict.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is a revision of a renewal application for stipends, tuition, and additional support for a pre-doctoral Training Program in Social Development at the University of Maryland. The program will focus on multi-level training in social development, including socio-affective, social-cognitive, social neuroscientific, social-relational, and social-cultural processes, and will include normal and clinical populations. We propose to train a total of 12 trainees over the five year period of the grant, using funds from NIH and matching funds from the University of Maryland. The training program will provide scientific knowledge and research experience in the area of social development that prepares pre-doctoral trainees for positions as faculty members in institutions of higher education and investigators in dedicated research institutions. The program involves 9 core faculty and 14 affiliated faculty. Core faculty members are from the Developmental Science specialization within the Department of Human Development. Affiliated faculty members include scholars in the departments of Human Development, Statistics, and Psychology at the University of Maryland as well as from off-campus institutions (e.g., Georgetown University, George Mason University, NICHD, NIMH). Pre-doctoral trainees are enrolled in the doctoral program in the Department of Human Development. Trainees conduct research and gain knowledge of social development through course work, statistical and methodological work, research apprenticeships, and exposure to cutting edge research and scholar/scientists from a variety of fields in a weekly Center for Children, Relationships, and Culture seminar series. The relevance of this research for public health regarding children's social development is multi-fold. Trainees will be trained to conduct research and teach courses in higher education on the etiology and developmental course of adaptive and maladaptive social behavior in a variety of areas. Research topics include factors associated with both risk and protective factors for healthy social development such as the development of social, emotional, and motivational competence; the development of strong, healthy interpersonal relationships; experiences with bullying, aggression, social withdrawal, victimization, and social rejection; the role of moral judgments and prejudice in exclusion; and the roles of parent-child and teacher-child relationships in developmental outcomes. Thus, the program is strongly related to public health in that the courses, the research, the expertise developed as a function of completing the program, and the topics covered in the training bear on fostering, faciliating, and maintaining the healthy development of individuals. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The Training Program in Social Development is strongly related to public health in that the courses, the research, and the expertise trainees receive in the program focus on understanding, fostering, faciliating, and maintaining the healthy social development of children, adolescents, and adults. Trainees who complete the program will be prepared to conduct the next generation of research on social development, which will contribute further to our understanding of the impact of social develpoment on public health.

The goals of this project are to investigate children's intergroup bias regarding peer relationships in familiar, everyday situations. Using direct assessments, previous research has shown that children evaluate racial exclusion as wrong using moral reasons in straightforward situations (Killen, Lee-Kim, McGlothlin, & Stangor, 2002). In complex or ambiguous situations, children often use a mixture of reasons, such as group functioning or personal choice to justify exclusion. The present studies will examine the ways in which children display implicit and explicit racial biases. Studies with adults have shown that while explicit biases have diminished dramatically over 50 years, implicit biases are still quite prevalent (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1986). Most of this research has not employed measurements that are developmentally appropriate for children; nor do they assess bias in the context of peer situations. Pilot work for the present study established the reliability and validity of two assessments for investigating implicit racial bias in children using ambiguous pictures cards and perceptions of similarity measurements. These instruments will be used in the present investigation to assess children's evaluations of contexts involving cross-race peer relationships. Using the social-cognitive domain model, this research will investigate whether and how children apply racial biases to their interpretations of ambiguous picture cards with cross-race peer dyads, to their perceptions of similarity, and to their judgments about the potential for cross-race friendships. In this assessment, social encounters are depicted that reflect everyday, familiar, social contexts for children, such as situations on the playground, at the park, and in the school yard. In addition, this research will examine how the ethnic make-up of children's school environments influences the extent to which children apply racial biases to decisions about peer relationships. Further, children's implicit and explicit bias will be examined in order to understand whether children who do not demonstrate explicit bias, nonetheless, exhibit implicit biases when asked to make judgments about peer relationships.
This research will investigate whether, and how, children take race into account when making decisions about peer encounters in morally-relevant peer relationship contexts. One study will focus primarily on implicit biases from children attending different schools (homogeneous and heterogeneous), and a second study will use multiple measures to understand the relationships between implicit and explicit intergroup judgments. Given that previous work has shown that different forms of social reasoning are used when evaluating peer contexts, this research will seek to determine if racial biases are brought into consideration when evaluating peer exchanges, guided by developmental social-cognitive domain theory.
The knowledge resulting from this project will enable educators, school psychologists, and school professionals to develop curriculum and intervention programs to address issues of intergroup tensions, and diversity in schools in a developmentally meaningful way. Given the multicultural nature of the workforce and adult world, it is essential to facilitate children's ability to interact comfortably with individuals from diverse backgrounds; a first step towards this goal is understanding when and how children's intergroup biases manifest in various social contexts and situations, and that is the central aim of this investigation.

This project supports a workshop on the topic of how children come to understand norms, rules, and obligations: a social cognition of norms. The workshop will bring together scholars who are leaders in the fields of moral development and theory of mind. While moral development research has, over the last 20 years, documented the richness of children's knowledge of principles of justice, fairness, and rights, only recently have moral development researchers started asking how children's psychological understandings inform their moral thinking. During the same time period, there has been an extensive research program on children's knowledge about others' psychological states, referred to as "theory of mind". Parallel to the new directions in moral development research, an emerging direction for theory of mind research is exploring the relation between normative and psychological construals of human action. Surprisingly, there has been little collaboration between researchers on children's moral development and researchers on children's theory of mind, despite the extensive lines of research in these two respective areas and the potential conceptual overlaps. The charge of this workshop will be to explore how those perspectives together generate a deeper understanding of the social cognition of normative relations. If the goal is to develop a full account of how children develop the abilities to use and form norms, rules, permissions, and obligations, what are the key concepts and distinctions? The challenge is to define a field of reasoning about norms, and to encourage researchers to view existing questions in this new light.

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.

Social exclusion from peer groups and the experience of negative treatment based on one's group membership (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, and wealth status) has long-term negative consequences such as depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal. Stereotypes and biases that often underlie social exclusion are entrenched by the time individuals reach adulthood. Thus, the most effective time for intervention is childhood. This project will implement an intervention program designed to change children's attitudes and behaviors in ways that produce greater inclusion and less bias. This intervention will utilize an innovative web-based interactive application ("app") that will be used in the classroom along with teacher led in-classroom discussions. Determining how to promote children's inclusive attitudes towards others in group contexts will have positive consequences for the classroom environment. The research findings regarding prejudice reduction, social inclusion and exclusion, and intergroup attitudes will be disseminated to developmental scientists, educators, teachers, and parents. The findings from this study will provide a tool for changing children's attitudes in elementary school classrooms to facilitate school belonging and academic achievement.

An experimental randomized control intervention design will be implemented to evaluate a program designed to reduce prejudice and promote intergroup friendships among 720 children enrolled in 36 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classrooms at 6 schools. The app that will be used to deliver the intervention features a series of animated scenarios, with voice-over narration, depicting peer encounters in which children are excluded from an activity by a majority group of peers. Children are asked to make decisions about inclusion and exclusion and watch the action unfold. Teacher-led classroom discussions occur immediately after children are exposed to the app, to enhance an understanding about the importance of inclusion and positive peer interactions. Pre-test and post-test measures include assessments of intergroup attitudes and behaviors (e.g., perceptions of similarity, reports of peer playmates, social exclusion evaluations, and stereotypic expectations) and socioemotional wellbeing (e.g., school belonging, ethnic identity, and perceived discrimination). Using mixed modeling, analyses will test the effects of the treatment condition on intergroup attitudes and socioemotional wellbeing. The investigators predict that attitudes and behaviors of children in the intervention group will differ from those in the control group. In addition, the investigators predict that the greatest benefit of the intervention program for younger children will be a reduction in negative intergroup attitudes, which start to form in middle elementary school, and that the greatest benefit for older children will be their increased sense of school belonging, which starts to diminish in late elementary school. The goal of this empirical project is to determine how to promote positive peer relationships in childhood, particularly relationships with peers from different cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. The intervention program is expected to facilitate positive learning environments for all children.

Project Summary/Abstract The proposed project will use a multi-site within-school randomized control trial (RCT) intervention design to promote positive intergroup relationships and to reduce prejudice in childhood. The health consequences for children who experience discrimination (e.g., name-calling, bullying, exclusion) as a result of prejudice include compromised health and well-being, stress and anxiety, and social withdrawal. Further, individuals who perpetuate bias (i.e., hold biases about social groups that restrict their social interactions) also experience health-related stress associated with negative intergroup relationships in school settings. Thus, reducing prejudice and bias in childhood has positive health, attitudinal, and academic outcomes for all children. Extensive developmental science research has shown that implicit bias (negative attitudes toward other social groups of which the beholder is unaware) and explicit biases (stereotypes) emerge as early as the preschool period and become more pervasive by late childhood, particularly as justifications for social exclusion. Research has provided evidence that positive contact with peers from different ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds effectively reduces prejudice and bias. Given the prevalence of bias-based social exclusion among children, the goal of the project is to promote positive intergroup contact and reduce biases and stereotypes in childhood. Participants will be 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students (8 ? 11 years of age; N = 1,440) in 72 classrooms in 12 schools in a large public school district outside of a large metropolitan area. The sample will be racially and ethnically diverse and include European-American, African-American, Latino/a, Asian- American, and multiracial students, who will be randomly assigned to an intervention program or a control condition (Business-as-Usual). The 10-week program involves the use of an in-classroom web-based curriculum tool called Developing Inclusive Youth, in conjunction with teacher-led classroom discussion sessions. Children make decisions and observe the outcomes of their own decision-making as the action unfolds contingent on their inclusion or exclusion choice while using the app. The pre-test post-test measures include socioemotional (school belonging, peer and teacher support, ethnic and gender public regard) and intergroup attitudes (social exclusion evaluations, and diversity in friendship choices). Analyses will utilize mixed modeling using restricted maximum likelihood estimation. We expect that, compared to the control group, children in the intervention program will have higher socioemotional scores and lower intergroup bias scores following the intervention. The benefits of decreasing prejudiced attitudes will be promotion of healthy social and emotional development of children.