Social exclusion from peer groups and the experience of negative treatment based on one's group membership (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, and wealth status) has long-term negative consequences such as depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal. Stereotypes and biases that often underlie social exclusion are entrenched by the time individuals reach adulthood. Thus, the most effective time for intervention is childhood. This project will implement an intervention program designed to change children's attitudes and behaviors in ways that produce greater inclusion and less bias. This intervention will utilize an innovative web-based interactive application ("app") that will be used in the classroom along with teacher led in-classroom discussions. Determining how to promote children's inclusive attitudes towards others in group contexts will have positive consequences for the classroom environment. The research findings regarding prejudice reduction, social inclusion and exclusion, and intergroup attitudes will be disseminated to developmental scientists, educators, teachers, and parents. The findings from this study will provide a tool for changing children's attitudes in elementary school classrooms to facilitate school belonging and academic achievement.
An experimental randomized control intervention design will be implemented to evaluate a program designed to reduce prejudice and promote intergroup friendships among 720 children enrolled in 36 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classrooms at 6 schools. The app that will be used to deliver the intervention features a series of animated scenarios, with voice-over narration, depicting peer encounters in which children are excluded from an activity by a majority group of peers. Children are asked to make decisions about inclusion and exclusion and watch the action unfold. Teacher-led classroom discussions occur immediately after children are exposed to the app, to enhance an understanding about the importance of inclusion and positive peer interactions. Pre-test and post-test measures include assessments of intergroup attitudes and behaviors (e.g., perceptions of similarity, reports of peer playmates, social exclusion evaluations, and stereotypic expectations) and socioemotional wellbeing (e.g., school belonging, ethnic identity, and perceived discrimination). Using mixed modeling, analyses will test the effects of the treatment condition on intergroup attitudes and socioemotional wellbeing. The investigators predict that attitudes and behaviors of children in the intervention group will differ from those in the control group. In addition, the investigators predict that the greatest benefit of the intervention program for younger children will be a reduction in negative intergroup attitudes, which start to form in middle elementary school, and that the greatest benefit for older children will be their increased sense of school belonging, which starts to diminish in late elementary school. The goal of this empirical project is to determine how to promote positive peer relationships in childhood, particularly relationships with peers from different cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. The intervention program is expected to facilitate positive learning environments for all children.
