Antecedents and Consequences of Cross-Race Friendships in Early and Middle Childhood

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship (under the "Broadening Participation" track of the SBE postdoctoral fellowships program) trains a young scientist exploring the effects of cross-race friendships in early and middle childhood. Despite its history of civil right progress, the U.S. continues to be plagued by racial inequalities, racial discrimination, and racial tensions. Finding solutions to these problems is critical to the country's social and economic wellbeing and will require cross-race cooperation based on trust, respect, and goodwill. Fostering cross-race friendships among youth is likely to facilitate cooperative work toward racial equality and justice. Past research has shown that cross-race friendships reduce negative racial attitudes. More positive racial attitudes and interracial interactions may, in turn, reduce the future prevalence of discrimination, which is linked to negative physical and mental health outcomes. Studying ways to encourage the frequency and quality of cross-race friendships in childhood may provide educators, parents, and policy-makers with effective methods of encouraging positive racial attitudes and openness to cross-race friendships at a point in development during which such attitudes are flexible. Given that the prevalence of cross-race friendships decreases across childhood (Aboud, Mendelson, & Purdy, 2003), the proposed work aims to understand the formation and function of cross-race friendships in early and middle childhood among youth from diverse racial backgrounds. The specific aims of the two proposed studies are to: (1) understand the ways in which parents' and children's attitudes and behaviors predict children's willingness to initiate cross-race interaction and the nature of such interactions, (2) identify qualities of cross-race interactions that promote cross-race friendships, and (3) explore whether cross-race friendships uniquely and causally predict improvement in racial attitudes over and above other types of cross-race contact. The first study explores whether children's endorsement of racial stereotypes and their beliefs regarding whether individuals of different racial groups are different in underlying structural and fundamental ways (i.e., racial essentialism) relate to their willingness to adopt, and their treatment of, cross-race versus same-race pen pals. This study also examines whether parental characteristics, including their valuing of diversity, the messages that they send their children about race, and the racial diversity of their neighborhoods and social networks predict children's pen pal selection and behavior. The second study extends the first by using an experimental methodology to examine the causal effects of children?s cross-race interactions and friendships on their racial attitudes (i.e., stereotypes and essentialist views). Same and cross-race dyads are brought into a lab setting and randomly assigned to interact under conditions of: (1) mere contact, (2) academic cooperation, and (3) friendship induction. This study examines whether these contextual manipulations lead to friendship formation, and in turn, a reduction in racial stereotyping and racially essentialist attitudes. These studies extend the current understanding of the nature and benefits of cross-race friendships in childhood in three ways. First, study 1 examines the antecedents of children's willingness to befriend and behave positively toward cross-race individuals rather than focusing on how cross-race friendships predict attitudes, as has been the focus of much previous work. Second, instead of relying solely on correlational associations, study 2 explores the causal links between cross-race friendships and racial attitudes. Finally, both studies extend previous work by exploring the formation and benefits of cross-race friendships among a diverse population, including African American, Latino, and White children.