In the past two decades, psychologists, educators, and economists have shown that social stratification creates social inequalities that have long-term detrimental effects on children's physical, emotional, and academic development. The segregation of social networks, as well as experiences of social inequality in the form of prejudice and bias,…

"Interpersonal" rejection and "intergroup" exclusion in childhood reflect different, but complementary, aspects of child development. Interpersonal rejection focuses on individual differences in personality traits, such as wariness and being fearful, to explain bully-victim relationships. In contrast, intergroup exclusion focuses on how in-group…

There is a dearth of published research on the role of intergroup contact on urban US ethnic minority children's and adolescents' evaluations of racial exclusion. The current investigation examined these issues in a sample of low-income minority 4th, 7th, and 10th grade (N = 129, 60% female) African American and Latino/a students attending…

To investigate how adolescents interpret ambiguous actions in hypothetical interracial peer encounters, we conducted a study in which 8th- and 11th-grade students (N = 837) evaluated 4 interracial peer encounters in which the intentions of the protagonist were ambiguous. The sample was evenly divided by gender and included both African American…

Asserts that dichotomous cultural templates such as independence and interdependence do not accurately reflect the complexity of social life and often result in stereotypic characterizations of social orientations of individuals and cultures. Discusses viewpoints that promote use of dichotomous labels, espouse dualities for some cultural aspects,…

Assessed fourth, seventh, and tenth graders' social reasoning about exclusion in three social contexts: friendship, peer, and school. Found that there were significant patterns of reasoning about exclusion for the context, the target of exclusion, and the degree to which social influence, authority expectations, and cultural norms explained…