Adolescents' own and parental expectations for cross-group friendship in the context of societal inequalities.

Jeanine Grütter,Sandesh Dhakal,Melanie Killen

doi:10.1111/josi.12484

Abstract

This study investigated adolescents' own and parental expectations about cross-group friendships between peers from different socio-economic status (SES). Nepalese adolescents (N = 389, M age = 14.08; grades: 7-10) evaluated an ambiguous peer encounter between a low and a high SES peer. Overall, adolescents attributed negative intentions to high-SES more than to low-SES peers. Most adolescents expected that high- and low-SES targets could not be friends, that parents of high-SES targets would disapprove of cross-group friendships, referencing social hierarchies and reputation, and that parents of low-SES targets would support friendship citing moral concerns and social mobility. Most adolescents were aware of systemic reasons that underlie SES biases. Given that low SES adolescents often suffer when excluded from peer experiences, these findings indicate that parental socialization strategies should focus not only on protecting children from experiences of discrimination but also from experiences related to social inequalities and a lack of social mobility.

Highlights

Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS) URL: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-2-1oaaaox3so1ed0Economists and political scientists have demonstrated the detrimental effects of societal inequalities on adolescents’ healthy development (e.g., Duncan & Murnane, 2014)
Given that low-socioeconomic status (SES) adolescents often suffer when excluded from peer experiences, these findings indicate that ethnic-racial socialization (ERS) parental strategies could include protecting children from experiences related to SES inequalities and a lack of social mobility as well as experiences of discrimination
Frequencies revealed that 33% of the participants attributed negative intentions and 65% of the adolescents attributed neutral or positive intentions to the target

Summary

Introduction

Economists and political scientists have demonstrated the detrimental effects of societal inequalities on adolescents’ healthy development (e.g., Duncan & Murnane, 2014). Such inequalities reflect power imbalances in social systems (Kraus & Keltner, 2013) that contribute to the marginalization of social minority groups. Depending on the social context studied, these marginalized groups reflect different social identity categories, such as race, ethnicity, culture, sex, religion, and socio-economic status (SES), and are at high risk for negative youth development (Causadias & Umaña-Taylor, 2018). As the phenomenon of marginalization is at least partly rooted in biases towards underrepresented groups, social policy designed to reduce societal inequalities benefits from understanding the psychological origins of individuals’ beliefs that rectify or perpetuate such disparities. A recent burgeoning of research has been conducted on how adolescents understand and evaluate societal inequalities related to the distribution of wealth among the population (Arsenio, 2018)

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