Intergroup Contact is Related to Evaluations of Interracial Peer Exclusion in African American Students

There are few published studies on the influence of intergroup contact on ethnic minority public school students' evaluations of interracial exclusion. In this study, African American children and adolescents (N = 158, 4th, 7th, and 10th grade; 67.1%) were individually interviewed regarding peer exclusion for scenarios depicting cross-race peer exclusion in various contexts. The level of positive intergroup contact, attribution of motives for exclusion, wrongfulness ratings, reasoning about exclusion, estimations of the frequency of exclusion, and awareness of the use of stereotypes to justify racial exclusion were assessed. Intergroup contact was significantly related to attributions of racial motives, higher ratings of wrongfulness, greater use of moral reasoning, and higher estimations of the frequency of exclusion. In addition to context effects, with increasing grade participants were more likely to refer to the historical and social circumstances contributing to the manifestation of racial stereotypes used to justify exclusion. The findings are discussed in terms of the existing research on intergroup relations and evaluations of social exclusion.