Developmental Psychology in Obedience/Prejudice
Developmental psychology in obedience/prejudice examines how individuals' attitudes and behaviors towards authority and social groups evolve over the course of their lives. It explores the factors that influence the development of obedience and prejudice, such as socialization, cognitive development, and moral reasoning. This field of study sheds light on how these psychological phenomena change as individuals grow and mature.
5 Key excerpts on "Developmental Psychology in Obedience/Prejudice"
eBook - ePubPsychology of Prejudice and Discrimination
3rd Edition
- Mary E. Kite, Bernard E. Whitley, Jr.(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...For example, prejudice in the adult sense may not begin to emerge until children grasp the concepts of ingroups and outgroups during preschool and might not be fully formed until late elementary school when they begin to understand the potential impact their attitudes have on other people and the abstract, social meanings of those attitudes. During the latter part of the developmental sequence, children also begin to learn that prejudice is bad and to control its expression. The bottom line is, we do not yet have a good understanding of how children turn into either prejudiced or nonprejudiced adults (Aboud & Amato, 2001). One reason for this lack of understanding is that, traditionally, the study of prejudice has been the domain of social psychologists and the study of cognitive and social development has been the domain of developmental psychologists, and the two groups have rarely collaborated to study the development of prejudice (S. Levy & Killen, 2008). That situation is changing, so the future should bring a better understanding of how prejudice develops. REDUCING CHILDREN’S PREJUDICE Having seen how prejudice can develop in children, we now turn to interventions psychologists and educators have devised to reduce or prevent the development of prejudice in children. This section examines three commonly used school-based interventions. First, we look at school desegregation, a social policy that many hoped would improve intergroup relations among children by fostering intergroup contact. We then consider cooperative learning and educational interventions such as multicultural and anti-bias education. School Desegregation In deciding the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated public education violated minority-group children’s right to equal protection of the law and ordered that public schools be desegregated...
eBook - ePubPrejudice
Its Social Psychology
- Rupert Brown(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...5 The Development of Prejudice in Children In an earlier chapter I examined a theory which traces the roots of adult prejudice back to childhood socialization experiences (see Chapter 2). The thrust of that approach, as we saw, was to identify certain patterns of family dynamics which would give rise to an authoritarian or dogmatic personality. Notwithstanding the historical importance of that approach, from the angle of a developmental social psychology of prejudice it suffered from two crucial weaknesses. One was that it was essentially a theory of the deviant personality. Only some children, those unfortunate enough to have been brought up in a particularly strict family, with domineering and moralistic parents, were thought likely to be predisposed to develop into prejudiced adults in later life. The remainder – presumably the majority? – because they were not so afflicted, were eased out of the theoretical field of view. The second drawback was that, despite the interest of that theory in the childhood origins of prejudice, remarkably little of the research it inspired actually studied children themselves. With the exception of Frenkel-Brunswik (1949, 1953) and one or two others, most work in this tradition studied adults and relied heavily on their retrospective reports of their childhood. However interesting these may be, they are no substitute for the direct observation of children’s own attitudes and behaviour. In this chapter I want therefore to turn the spotlight fully on children, particularly in the first ten years of their lives...
- Donna Couchenour, J. Kent Chrisman(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...Also, some research has linked perspective taking, conservation, reconciliation of attitudes, constancy (the understanding that social groups are constant over time), and ability to group people together in multiple ways to prejudice and bias in children. However, findings are mixed and this approach has been criticized for ignoring the important role of parents, peers, and social context in shaping children’s attitudes. More recent research on prejudice development in children has highlighted the importance of the strength of children’s identification with the social identity in question (e.g., ethnic identity) and (peer) social norms for the expression of prejudice and bias. Practical Applications Overtly negative attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward members of other groups are rare in children, as they are in adults. However, bias toward and preference for one’s own group is more common; it is also considered to be problematic because preference may lead to behaviors that derogate the out-group and lead to segregation. Research suggests that bias appears very early in ethnic majority children’s lives (from 3 years), and bias and prejudice increase to a peak around 7 years of age where they trail off. For ethnic minority children the findings are more mixed, and for intergroup contexts other than race, such as nationality, findings appear to follow a different developmental trajectory. So far we have considered a number of drivers of the development of prejudice in children: social context, cognitive abilities, and social identity. These approaches have implications for practical interventions for use with young children. First, it appears that adults’ nonverbal behavior, and observing comfortable interactions between group members, is important for propagating positive ideas about intergroup relations and creating positive evaluations of out-group members...
eBook - ePubPeer Prejudice and Discrimination
The Origins of Prejudice
- Harold D. Fishbein(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...That concept does not apply to the development of prejudice and discrimination. That is, prejudice and discrimination vary as a function of target group. For example, knowing how racial prejudice develops does not accurately inform us about the development of opposite-sex prejudice. Moreover, knowledge of the development of prejudice for any target group does not necessarily predict discrimination patterns toward that group. In other words, prejudice and discrimination generally follow somewhat different developmental paths. What have we learned in our survey about these effects? First, in briefly comparing the development of prejudice and discrimination among the four target groups, the consistency appears to be greater for prejudice than for discrimination. Second, the results for opposite-sex prejudice and discrimination most closely fit the predictions based on genetic/evolutionary and cultural/historical conceptualizations. Third, in all cases, behavioral differences between the groupings at least partially underlie both prejudice and discrimination. Finally, in all groupings, the first two age periods of change predicted by group identity conceptualizations emerge, indicating that social cognitive development partially underlies the early development of prejudice and discrimination. Let us first examine the prejudice literature. Data on preschool children were only available for opposite-sex and race prejudice. For these groupings, the emergence of prejudice (or its proxy, negative stereotyping) occurs by age 3 years, and is strongly evident in 4-year-olds. However, this must be qualified because Black preschool children often show prejudice toward Blacks at this age. From age 4 and older, different patterns are found for these two groupings as well as for prejudice toward mentally retarded peers. Opposite-sex prejudice, which is bi-directional, increases in strength to about age 8, and declines somewhat between ages 8 and 10 years...
eBook - ePub- Matt Jarvis(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...7 Social psychology Key assumptions of the approach Obedience and agency Prejudice and social identity Social constructionism Key application: tackling racism Contemporary issue: lesbian and gay psychology Contributions and limitations of social approaches Summary Key assumptions of the approach Think back to someone you have spoken to in the last 24 hours. In what ways was your behaviour influenced by that person, and how might you have influenced them? Did you find them attractive or cool? If so, why? Did they belong to a group that you have positive or negative feelings about? If so, did you show your feelings? If not, why not, and how did you conceal your reactions to them? You begin to see the complexity of social psychology, but also its relevance to all of us. Every time we interact with someone else we are potentially involved in a huge number of social processes. When most people say they are interested in psychology it is really social psychology—the study of human interaction—that they mean. The previous four chapters began with a typical study used to illustrate that particular approach. Trying to find a typical social-psychological study is a bit like trying to identify a typical person. They are simply too diverse. Social psychologists have used a tremendous variety of methods to investigate people’s social behaviour. In this chapter we will be looking at research ranging from experiments in which participants are ordered to give people fatal electric shocks in order to see whether they will obey a person in authority (Milgram, 1963), to an analysis of the political implications of the language people use to talk about rape (Doherty and Anderson, 1998)...
