Social Understanding in Young Israeli-Jewish, Israeli-Palestinian, Palestinian, and Jordanian Children: Moral Judgments and Stereotypes (original) (raw)
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Early education and development, 2010
An empirical investigation was conducted of young Palestinian, Jordanian, Israeli-Palestinian, and Israeli-Jewish children's (N = 433; M = 5.7 years of age) cultural stereotypes and their evaluations of peer intergroup exclusion based upon a number of different factors, including being from a different country and speaking a different language. Children in this study live in a geographical region that has a history of cultural and religious tension, violence, and extreme intergroup conflict. Our findings revealed that the negative consequences of living with intergroup tension are related to the use of stereotypes. At the same time, the results for moral judgments and evaluations about excluding peers provided positive results about the young children's inclusive views regarding peer interactions.
Journal of School Psychology, 2016
The current investigation tested the efficacy of the Extended Class Exchange Program (ECEP) in reducing prejudicial attitudes. Three hundred and twenty-two 3rd and 4th grade students from both Israeli-Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian schools in the ethnically mixed city of Jaffa were randomly assigned to either intervention or control classes. Members of the intervention classes engaged in ECEP's activities, whereas members of the control classes engaged in a socialemotional learning program. The program's outcomes were measured a week before, immediately after, and 15 months following termination. Results showed that the ECEP decreased stereotyping and discriminatory tendencies toward the other group and increased positive feelings and readiness for social contact with the other group upon program termination. Additionally, the effects of the ECEP were generalized to an ethnic group (i.e., Ethiopians) with whom the ECEP's participants did not have any contact. Finally, the ECEP retained its significant effect 15 months after the program's termination, despite the serious clashes between Israel and the Palestinians that occurred during that time. This empirical support for the ECEP'S utility in reducing prejudice makes it potentially applicable to other areas in the world, especially those that are characterized by ethnic tension and violent conflicts.
Moral Judgments About Jewish–Arab Intergroup Exclusion: The Role of Cultural Identity and Contact
Developmental Psychology, 2014
Prejudice and discrimination as justifications for social exclusion are often viewed as violations of the moral principles of welfare, justice, and equality, but intergroup exclusion can also often be viewed as a necessary and legitimate means to maintain group identity and cohesion (Rutland, Killen, & Abrams, 2010). The current study was guided by the social reasoning developmental perspective (Killen & Rutland, 2011) to examine the moral judgments of social exclusion encounters, and the degree to which cultural identity and actual contact with members of other cultural groups is related to social evaluations. Surprisingly, no research has examined how intergroup contact bears on moral judgments about Jewish–Arab encounters in the United States. The current study surveyed 241 Jewish and 249 non-Arab/non-Jewish (comparison group) 14- and 17-year-olds to assess their cultural identification, intergroup contact, and moral judgments regarding intergroup peer social exclusion situations between Jewish and Arab youth in peer, home, and community contexts. Participants overwhelmingly rejected exclusion of an outgroup member explicitly because of their group membership. Context effects emerged, and exclusion was rated as most acceptable in the community context and least acceptable in the peer context. Three factors of identity (i.e., exploration, commitment, and concern for relationships) were explored. Generally, higher identity commitment and lower identity concern for relationships were related to more inclusive evaluations. Interactions between the identity factors and intergroup contact and cultural group, however, differentially predicted evaluations of intergroup exclusion.
Journal of Research on Adolescence, 2014
Ethno-political conflict impacts thousands of youth globally and has been associated with a number of negative psychological outcomes. Extant literature has mostly addressed the adverse emotional and behavioral outcomes of exposure while failing to examine change over time in social cognitive factors in contexts of ethno-political conflict. Using cohort sequential longitudinal data, this study examines ethnic variation in the development of negative stereotypes about ethnic outgroups among Palestinian (n = 600), Israeli Jewish (n = 451), and Israeli Arab (n = 450) youth over 3 years. Age and exposure to ethno-political violence were included as covariates for these trajectories. Findings indicate important ethnic differences in trajectories of negative stereotypes about ethnic outgroups, as well as variation in how such trajectories are shaped by prolonged ethno-political conflict.
Journal of School Psychology, 2019
Although contact-based interventions are the cornerstone of prejudice reduction, in high-conflict environments, incendiary contact with outgroups can instead exacerbate negative attitudes. Supplementing contact interventions with social-cognitive/emotional approaches may, instead, help facilitate positive contact. This study evaluated the effectiveness of two prejudice reduction interventions amongst 148 Palestinian-Israeli and 154 Jewish-Israeli 5 th grade students (M age.years =10.55, SD=0.26) in a high conflict area. Schools in Jaffa, Israel were assigned to a social-cognitive/emotional skills-based intervention, a skills-and contact-based intervention (i.e., skills, skills+contact), or the control group-all delivered as part of the curriculum. Prejudice was assessed through participants' judgments and justifications about hypothetical scenarios of intergroup exclusion in peer and home contexts at pre-test, post-test, and 6-month follow-up. Repeated measures ANOVAs showed various main effects including gender, ethnicity, and context in which the exclusion occurred (peer/home). Significant higher level interactions with group by time demonstrated the positive influence of both treatment groups on prejudice reduction. The skills and skills+contact groups became more rejecting while the control group became more accepting of exclusion across time. Additionally, the skills and skills+contact groups increased in moral and empathetic reasoning over time, whereas the control group increased in social conventional and stereotyped prejudiced reasoning. These findings illustrate the effectiveness of in-school social-cognitive/emotional skills and combined skills+contact approaches in reducing the prejudiced attitudes of Palestinian-and Jewish-Israeli pre-adolescents, especially in areas with protracted conflict.
This study examines the effect of a major event (terrorist attacks) on the stereotypic perceptions, attitudes and affects of 119 Israeli adolescents (56 males and 63 females of 5th and 8th grades) toward three target groups: (a) Palestinians, who still have con¯ictive relations with the Israelis (Palestinian extremists carried out the attacks), (b) Jordanians, who have peaceful relations with the Israelis and (c) Arabs, in general, who are considered a subcategory including Arabs of all nations. The questionnaires were administered to the same adolescents three times: during a relatively peaceful spell in Israeli±Palestinian relations; one day following two terrorist attacks, and three months thereafter. In the last administration adolescents' need for closure was also measured. Adolescents' perceptions, attitudes and affect toward the three target group were differentiatedÐrelating to Palestinians most negatively and to Jordanians most positively. Also, following the terrorist attacks, stereotypic perceptions and attitudes changed in a negative direction, in relation to all the three groups; again with expressed differentiation among the three groups. In the third measurement, some measures remained negative, but some changed to be more positive. Only few effects of age were detected and several signi®cant correlation with need for closure were found. These results indicate that stereotypes and attitudes toward outgroups are context-dependent, in¯uenced by events; thus they serve as`a seismograph' to the quality of intergroup relations at any given time.
International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2003
A pre-and post-test study assessed the effects of Israeli and Palestinian children's viewing of Rechov Sumsum/Shara'a Simsim, a television series presenting messages of mutual respect and understanding. Israeli-Jewish, Palestinian-Israeli, and Palestinian preschoolers (N ¼ 275) were interviewed about their social judgments. Results showed that although some of the children had negative conceptions about adult Arabs and Jews, children, on the whole, did not invoke these stereotypes when evaluating peer conflict situations between Israeli and Palestinian children. Exposure to the programme was linked to an increase in children's use of both prosocial justifications to resolve conflicts and positive attributes to describe members of the other group. Palestinian children's abilities to identify symbols of their own culture increased over time. The results indicate the effectiveness of media-based interventions such as Rechov Sumsum/Shara'a Simsim on countering negative stereotypes by building a peer-oriented context that introduces children to the everyday lives of people from different cultures.
Social Exclusion in Cultural Context: Group Norms, Fairness, and Stereotypes
2013
Title of Document: SOCIAL EXCLUSION IN CULTURAL CONTEXT: GROUP NORMS, FAIRNESS, AND STEREOTYPES. Aline Hitti, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Directed By: Professor Melanie Killen, Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology The current study investigated pre-adolescents’ and adolescents’ attitudes about social exclusion based on cultural membership, specifically exclusion of individuals from Arab descent. Developmental intergroup research on the Arab cultural identity is sparse, and given this is a group that is highly associated with negative emotionally charged stereotypes in adults, it is important to understand the developmental origins of such attitudes. Questions about the role of stereotypes, cultural identity, shared interest in activities (e.g., hobbies), exclusive and inclusive group norms, and intergroup attributions of emotions in exclusion contexts were addressed. To answer these questions non-Arab American 12and 16-year-olds (N =199) evaluated situations i...