A post by Beatrice Bobba, Flavia Albarello, Monica Rubini and Elisabetta Crocetti
As current societies become increasingly diverse in terms of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, ethnic prejudice, which implies negative emotions, attitudes, and behaviours against people of different ethnic groups (Brown, 2011) might also increase. This can pose significant challenges to the adjustment and well-being of ethnic majority and minority youth. Studying how intergroup attitudes develop from late adolescence to emerging adulthood offers unique insights into future generations’ perceptions of society and culture. Despite a long line of research on ethnic prejudice, only few studies (e.g., Bratt et al., 2016; Rekker et al., 2015; Weber, 2019; Wölfer et al., 2016) have specifically addressed its development and correlates during late adolescence. These studies reported some mixed findings, possibly because of the different dimensions of prejudice considered. Some examined its affective (i.e., negative feelings against members of ethnic minority groups), while others its cognitive component (i.e., negative stereotypes and beliefs about ethnic minorities). To our knowledge, no prior research has conceived ethnic prejudice as a multifaceted construct and addressed both components simultaneously.
Extant research has also examined factors associated with ethnic prejudice, usually distinguishing between individual (e.g., gender, socio-economic status, personality) and socio-contextual (e.g., parents and peers’ influences, school features) antecedents. Additionally, adolescents’ approach to ethnic and cultural diversity might be influenced by how they define their identities in relevant domains (e.g., educational, relational)—a crucial task at this life stage (Albarello et al., 2018). Youth are expected to develop meaningful identity commitments, explore their choices in-depth, and eventually reconsider current commitments for more satisfying choices. Especially the process of in-depth exploration (i.e., the ability to actively reflect on current identity commitments, look for information, and talk about them with others) has been linked to a broader intellectual curiosity and more thorough thinking. These in turn can be useful tools to overcome the simplistic view of “Us vs. Them” at the core of ethnic prejudice.
In our study published in EJP (Bobba et al., 2022), we adopted a person-centred approach to examine how affective and cognitive ethnic prejudice develop from late adolescence to emerging adulthood and whether educational identity processes can influence this development. A total of 297 Italian youth in late adolescence were assessed longitudinally five times across two years and nine months and completed questionnaires about educational identity processes (i.e., commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration of commitment) and their levels of affective and cognitive prejudice against ethnic minority groups. First, we examined mean-level changes and stability. Next, we tested whether participants could be assigned to different developmental groups based on their levels of affective and cognitive prejudice, and whether commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration of educational identity commitment could predict participants’ membership to one of these groups.
At the mean-level, cognitive prejudice decreased slightly from late adolescence to emerging adulthood while affective prejudice remained stable. Levels of rank-order stability were high across all the time points, although affective prejudice was less stable than cognitive prejudice. Additionally, three different groups of participants were identified, distinguishing between those with low, moderate, and high levels of affective prejudice. Similarly, participants could be assigned to one of three groups based on their low, moderate, and high levels of cognitive prejudice. For both dimensions of prejudice, the largest group was the one with moderate levels of prejudice (47% and 66% for affective and cognitive prejudice, respectively), followed by the one with high (29% and 20%, respectively) and then the one with low levels (24% and 14%, respectively).
Regarding the role of identity, youth who engaged more in in-depth exploration of their commitment at the beginning of the study were more likely to be part of the low rather than the moderate prejudice group for both affective and cognitive facets. Additionally, these youth were less likely to fall in the high affective prejudice group compared to the moderate one. Commitment and reconsideration of commitment did not predict membership to any of the ethnic prejudice groups.
Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering multiple facets of prejudice to understand its development in conjunction with youth advancements in multiple domains. During late adolescence, we found that more sophisticated cognitive skills such as in-depth exploration of one’s identity commitments could help adolescents understand and navigate the complexity of ethnic diversity. As such, our study provides initial evidence of the intertwined nature of in-depth exploration and ethnic prejudice. Active and thoughtful reflection — that is, the cornerstone of identity exploration — might not only inform personally relevant decisions but also extend to the interpersonal domain by guiding adolescents’ feelings and thoughts about others, while potentially preventing the development of affective and cognitive prejudice against ethnic minorities. Additional research is needed to confirm these findings and extend our understanding of these processes in the earlier years of adolescence.
Importantly, in our study only a small portion of participants fell in the low ethnic prejudice groups for both cognitive and affective facets, which highlights the need for interventions aimed at reducing negative intergroup attitudes and relations. Along this line, our study might not only provide new insights into ethnic prejudice development in the transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood but might also suggest new lines for prevention and intervention programs. It seems that encouraging youth to explore their identity and engage in thoughtful reflection might prove beneficial not only for their own identity formation processes, but also for their relations with ethnic minorities and for their general adjustment to current culturally diverse societies.
References
Albarello, F., Crocetti, E., & Rubini, M. (2018). I and us: A longitudinal study on the interplay of personal and social identity in adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47(4), 689–702. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0791-4
Bobba, B., Albarello, F., Rubini, M., & Crocetti, E. (2022). Addressing ethnic prejudice in youth: Developmental trajectories and associations with educational identity. European Journal of Personality. https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070221123785
Bratt, C., Sidanius, J., & Sheehy-Skeffington, J. (2016). Shaping the development of prejudice: Latent growth modeling of the influence of social dominance orientation on outgroup affect in youth. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(12), 1617–1634. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216666267
Brown, R. (2011). Prejudice: Its social psychology. John Wiley & Sons.
Rekker, R., Keijsers, L., Branje, S., & Meeus, W. (2015). Political attitudes in adolescence and emerging adulthood: Developmental changes in mean level, polarization, rank-order stability, and correlates. Journal of Adolescence, 41, 136–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2015.03.011
Weber, H. (2019). Attitudes towards minorities in times of high immigration: A panel study among young adults in Germany. European Sociological Review, 35(2), 239–257. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcy050
Wölfer, R., Schmid, K., Hewstone, M., & van Zalk, M. (2016). Developmental dynamics of intergroup contact and intergroup attitudes: Long-term effects in adolescence and early adulthood. Child Development, 87(5), 1466–1478. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12598