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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Adolescent Psychological Development
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2025.1554122
This article is part of the Research Topic Contemporary Issues in the Study of Adolescent Gender Development View all articles
Who Should I Listen To? Gender and Age Effects in How Group Norms Relate to Adolescents' Intergroup Relations and Prejudiced Attitudes
Provisionally accepted- 1 University of Connecticut, Storrs, United States
- 2 Siena College, Colonie, New York, United States
When thinking about intergroup exclusion, adolescents weigh prosociality and fairness with the influences of their families and peers. However, research has yet to address whether these group norms influence youth similarly across gender and age. This study assessed whether gender and age moderate the influence of parent and peer outgroup attitudes on 241 Jewish American 9 th graders' (MAge9thGrade=14.18; SD=0.42) and 12 th (MAge12thGrade=17.21; SD=0.43) acceptance and reasoning about intergroup exclusion toward Arab American peers. Results revealed that gender was associated with the malleability to influence of 9 th graders' attitudes, whereas their 12 th grade counterparts were unaffected. Furthermore, positive peer groups served as a buffer against the detrimental effects of parents' prejudiced attitudes. These findings contribute to the understanding of the development of prosocial reasoning and behaviors in adolescence.
Keywords: intergroup relations, social exclusion, societal reasoning, Jewish American, Arab American, Prejudice, age, gender
Received: 01 Jan 2025; Accepted: 04 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Klein, Brenick, Kelly, Mohamed, Scally and Andrade. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Sydney Klein, University of Connecticut, Storrs, United States
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