Adolescent racial prejudice development: the role of friendship quality and interracial contact

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Adolescent racial prejudice development the role
of friendship quality and inter-racial contact

• Fiona White, PhD
• School of Psychology

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Introduction and rationale for this study

• Prejudice toward racial minority groups remains a
  prevalent social problem in Australia (Dunn,
  2003 Fraser Islam, 2000). Despite this, there
  has been limited research investigating prejudice
  development, particularly amongst adolescents.

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Forms of racial prejudice

• Blatant/ traditional prejudice involves the open
  expression of negative attitudes/emotions towards
  minority groups (Meertens Pettigrew, 1997).
• Subtle/modern prejudice is indirect and involves
  the denial of expressions of positive emotions
  towards a minority group (Meertens Pettigrew,
  1997)

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Forms of racial prejudice in Australia

• Pedersen and Walker (1997) found in an Australian
  sample that subtle racial prejudice was more
  prevalent than blatant prejudice, and that
  blatant prejudice was declining in Australia
  (Walker, 1994).
• It is predicted that
• H1 Adolescents will report higher levels of
  subtle prejudice towards Asian and Middle Eastern
  Australians than blatant prejudice.

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Social-cognitive factors and adolescent prejudice
development

• By adolescence, peers play an increasingly
  important role, including a greater influence on
  racial attitudes (Ritchey Fishbein, 2001
  Verkuyten, 2002).
• More mature cognitions have developed which
  enable the differentiation of people from the
  same racial group in more accurate and realistic
  ways (Black-Gutman, Hickson, 1996).

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Social-cognitive factors and adolescent prejudice
development

• Late adolescents possess more experience and
  exposure to people of a variety of cultures, thus
  increasing ones social contact with other racial
  groups.

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Social-cognitive factors and adolescent prejudice
development

• Late adolescents attend more to individual
  differences rather than to racial group
  stereotypes compared to middle adolescents
  (Aboud, 1988).
• Given the assumption that prejudice stems in part
  from simplistic social thinking, one would expect
  prejudice to decline as adolescents progress to
  more abstract levels of thinking (Hoover
  Fishbein, 1999).

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Social-cognitive factors and adolescent prejudice
development

• It is predicted that
• H2 University (late) adolescents will show
  less prejudice towards Asian and Middle Eastern
  Australians than high-school (middle)
  adolescents.

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Friendship quality and racial prejudice
development

• Ritchey and Fishbeins (2001) found no
  association between adolescents and their
  friends prejudiced attitudes, concluding that
  friends do not influence adolescent prejudice
  development.
• Importantly however, they did not measure a)
  friendship quality as a moderator of this
  correlation, or b) analyse this association
  within close reciprocal friendship dyads.

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Friendship quality and racial prejudice
development

• Similarity in friends attitudes can come about
  via
• i) initial friendship selection - friends are
  selected on the basis of their similar attitudes
  including racial attitudes or
• ii) mutual socialisation - close friends
  attitudes assimilate with, and accommodate for,
  one another as the friendship grows in closeness.

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Friendship quality and racial prejudice
development

• According to initial friendship selection and
  mutual socialisation approaches one would expect
  close friends (i.e., high friendship quality) to
  share more similar prejudiced attitudes compared
  with acquaintances (moderate to low friendship
  quality). Therefore, it is predicted that
• H3 The higher the friendship quality within the
  reciprocal dyad, the greater the similarity in
  subtle and blatant prejudice scores between
  friends.

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Inter-racial friendship contact and prejudice

• Allports (1954) Contact Hypothesis asserts that
  increased contact with racial out-groups will
  significantly decrease prejudice towards these
  groups.
• The Decategorisation Model predicts that
  interracial contact brings about personalised
  interactions with individuals from former
  out-groups and as a result category-based
  stereotypes of in-group and out-group are
  abandoned (Gaertner, et al., 1994).

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Inter-racial friendship contact and prejudice

• The Common In-Group Identity Model predicts that
  through interracial contact cognitive
  representation of in-group and out-group occur
  where those formally referred to as them now
  become part of us. Therefore it is predicted
  that
• H4 Increased contact with racial minority
  (out-) groups will be associated with lower
  levels of prejudice towards Asian and Middle
  Eastern Australians.

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MethodParticipants
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Method Measures

• Demographic/Peer Contact Questionnaire
• Meertens Pettigrews (1997) 40-item Prejudice
  Questionnaire (range of ? 0.70 to 0.85)
• Parker Ashers (1993) Friendship Quality
  Questionnaire (? 0.92)
• Paulhus (1991) Balanced Inventory of Desirable
  Responding (? .68).

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Method Procedure

• Questionnaires were administered in a
  counterbalanced fashion to avoid order effects.
  Schools students and their friend completed the
  questionnaires separately but simultaneously in
  their classroom room. University students
  completed their questionnaire in a tutorial room
  and upon completion were given their friends set
  of questionnaires in a sealed envelope to return
  in the following week.

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Results Hypotheses 1 2
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Results Hypotheses 1 2

• For the combined sample of adolescents subtle
  prejudice was found to be significantly higher
  than blatant prejudice, t(393)28.99, plt.01, thus
  supporting H1.
• Separate one-way ANOVAs revealed that school-aged
  (middle) adolescents reported significantly
  higher levels of subtle prejudice, blatant
  prejudice, total prejudice towards Asians and
  total prejudice towards Middle Easterners than
  late (university) adolescents strongly supporting
  H2.

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Results Friendship dyads perceptions of
prejudice friendship quality
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Results Hypotheses 3

• A bi-variate correlation between friendship
  quality and the absolute difference (prejudice)
  score was calculated for each age group. The
  analyses revealed that no significant
  relationship exists between dyads prejudice
  attitudes and the degree of friendship quality.
• H3 was not supported.

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Results Hypotheses 4

• School adolescents who had contact with Asian
  friends reported significantly less subtle
  F(1,120) 6.01, p .016 and blatant F(1,124)
  3.87, p lt.05 Asian prejudice.
• University adolescents who had contact with Asian
  friends reported significantly less blatant
  F(1,157) 5.23, p .023 Asian prejudice.
• Overall H4 was supported.

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Discussion Hypotheses 1 2

• Overall, there was a significantly higher
  reporting of subtle prejudice. This may be due to
  the fact that it is a more socially acceptable
  way of expressing prejudice today (Meertens
  Pettigrew, 1997).
• The finding that school adolescents reported
  higher prejudice may be explained in terms of
  educational/cognitive maturity factors rather
  than age alone (Dunn, 2003). What happens to this
  trend once adolescents leave university needs to
  be studied via further longitudinal analyses.

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Discussion Hypothesis 3

• Significant correlations between prejudice
  attitudes within dyads, contrary to Ritchey and
  Fishbeins (2001) findings. Despite this
  friendship quality was not found to moderate the
  similarity of prejudice attitudes within close
  friendship dyads.
• It may be the case that adolescents can
  experience high friendship quality without ever
  broaching the topics of race or prejudice.
• Alternatively, friends can have similar/different
  prejudice attitudes without focusing on attitudes
  of race or prejudice to choose their friends.

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Discussion Hypothesis 4

• Contact with Asian friends (or racial out groups)
  resulted in significantly lower levels of Asian
  prejudice for both age cohorts.
• This positive finding suggests that the future
  implementation of cooperative contact strategies
  within the classroom - establishing superordinate
  goals between interracial friendship groups - may
  be a worthwhile pursuit for developmental
  psychologists interested in curbing the growth of
  adolescent prejudice.

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Thank you for listening!!Special
AcknowledgmentsBethany Wootton, Joyce
ManHernan DiazJana Rasiah Emily Swift Amanda
Wilkinson