Browsing by Subject "Prejudice"
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Item The origins of heterosexist attitudes among young children(2015-05) Clark, Caitlin Marie; Bigler, Rebecca S.; Woolley, Jacqueline; Echols, CatherineStereotyping and prejudice on the basis of sexual orientation are common among adolescents and adults. Although empirical data on the topic are lacking, theoretical work indicates that such biases are likely to emerge in childhood. Children attend to gender and the distribution of genders into roles--including familial roles--by three years of age. Furthermore, young children's limited cognitive skills, and a reliance on the inherence heuristic, lead to especially strong endorsement of many forms of stereotypes and prejudices. The primary goal of this thesis was to test theoretically derived hypotheses concerning the emergence of, and age-related changes in, children's heterosexist views of relationships across early and middle childhood. As part of this goal, I created a reliable, valid, and practical measure of heterosexist attitudes for use with 5- to 10-year-old children. Children viewed 12 advertisements that portray diverse types of human relationships, including both same- and cross-sex couples and families, and answered questions concerning their interpretation and liking of each image. Children also completed measures of their gender stereotyping and the inherence heuristic. Participants included 72 racially diverse children from a large city in the southwest United States. Results indicated that children were much more accurate at interpreting cross-sex than same-sex romantic relationships, and girls were better at this interpretation than boys were. Children's attitudes varied as a function of whether they had accurately or inaccurately labeled the same-sex pairs; those who incorrectly interpreted the same-sex couples as heterosexual had no difference in attitudes, but the children who correctly identified the same-sex romantic pairs showed more positive attitudes towards the cross-sex than the same-sex romantic pairs. There was an interaction of participant gender and image gender for children’s attitudes; children preferred the images that matched their own gender. There were no effects of gender stereotyping on children's attitudes or interpretation. Children who interpreted the same-sex romantic pairs correctly had high levels of inherence heuristic adherence. The study was successful in creating an original measure for assessing heterosexist attitudes in young children, and this opens up many promising venues for research on the development of heterosexist attitudes in young children.Item Reducing heterosexist attitudes toward relationships in young children(2016-05) Clark, Caitlin Marie; Bigler, Rebecca S.; Church-Lang, Jessica; Echols, Catharine; Russell, Stephen; Woolley, JacquelineSchool climates in the U.S. are typically characterized by heterosexism, or bias against sexual minority students. Research suggests that elementary school children might benefit from lessons that acknowledge and support same-sex romantic relationships (Jetlova & Fish, 2005; Griffin & Oullet, 2010). The primary aim of this project is to design and test the effectiveness of an intervention aimed at teaching children about the existence of families with same-sex parents and improving their attitudes toward these families. A secondary aim is to explore whether several individual differences variables moderate attitudinal changes. The study took place at a local private school, and 106 children participated in the assessment. Children were assigned to the sexual minority inclusive or sexual minority non-inclusive condition. Inclusive lessons provided age-appropriate, active lessons about families that included the explicit modeling and valuing of same-sex parents. Non-inclusive lessons were identical, but did not include any explicit instruction about same-sex parents. Data collection occurred at a pretest before the lessons occurred and an immediate posttest following lesson completion. The efficacy of the lessons was assessed with three measures: the Heterosexist Attitudes Toward Relationships Scale (Clark & Bigler, 2014); a family creation task, in which children grouped photographs into possible families; and a behavioral task in which children were presented with five children’s books, each about a different kind of family, and asked to select their favorites. Additionally, I assessed four factors hypothesized to moderate children’s reactions to the lessons, including participants’ a) age, b) gender, c) gender stereotyping (COAT-AM; Liben & Bigler, 2002), and d) reliance on inherence heuristic (Sutherland & Cimpian, in press). Results indicate that children, regardless of condition, improved in their knowledge of and attitudes toward same-sex couples after intervention. For the measure of same-sex romance knowledge, there was interaction of time and condition. Children in the inclusive condition had higher levels of same-sex romance knowledge than those in the non-inclusive condition. Contrary to our hypothesis, none of our predicted individual difference factors moderated children’s reactions to the lessons. This study provides useful information for educators who wish to implement LGB inclusive curricula in their elementary classrooms.Item Something to Fear: Perception of Defining Characteristics of Animals, Evaluation of Animals, and the Moderating Role of Speciesism(Texas A&M International University, 2015-06) Waters, Allison Elaine; Muñoz, MonicaSpeciesism, a form of prejudice wherein a person gives or takes value away from an organism based upon how he or she categorizes living things, is most likely a form of flexible evolutionary adaptation. However, with increasing awareness of humanity's impact on the environment and growing morality, speciesism is increasingly becoming a disadvantage. Speciesism can be reflected in actions from unethical breeding habits to outright attacks on certain animals. The purpose of this study was to examine if altering the physical appearance of animals affects the person's attitudes towards those animals. It was hypothesized that altering physical characteristics of some animals would increase attractiveness of the animals and this effect would be moderated by speciesism. Fifty-six university students were asked to rate each of a series of 20 animal images to measure their specific animal attitudes, defined as their evaluation of the appearance, predicted behavior, and threat potential of those animals. The control group (Condition 1) evaluated 9 unaltered animal images and the experimental group (Condition 2) evaluated the altered versions of those images. Speciesism was measured as a potential moderator of altering the image. Hierarchical regression showed altering the image to be a significant predictor (β = -.271, p = .043) of attitudes. Speciesism, however, was neither a significant predictor by itself (β = -.144, p = .276) nor significantly strengthened or weakened the effect of altering the images (β = -.516, p = .197).Item Stranger in a strange land : a study of the effect of foreignness on perceptions of Latinos(2014-08) Martinez, Mercedes Shannon; Awad, Germine H.; Cokley, Kevin; Ainslie, Ricardo; Sherry, Allissa; Strong, PaulineSeptember 11th 2001 led to an increase in the intensity of the already existing discourses surrounding what it means to be an American, with a particular focus on the Southern border of the United States and Mexican immigration as a perceived threat to national security. This study seeks to address the how prejudice towards undocumented Mexican immigrants generalizes to Mexican Americans. This relationship was theorized by Chavez (2008), and is what he calls the Latino threat narrative. Experimental methods will be used to measure how perceptions of Latinos differ as a function of foreignness using a 2 (positive vs. negative scenario) x 4 (Mexican American, undocumented immigrant, Latino and Anglo) X 2 (Group Process: SDO or RWA) between-subjects design. Participants were asked to read scenarios that describes a man (either Mexican American, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, a Latino or White) accidently hitting another car while parking and either leaving a note or not. The results demonstrate that when the immigration status of the man described is unknown, and he does not leave a note, participants high in Social Dominance Orientation attitudes are more likely to identify them as an undocumented Mexican immigrant. The findings of this study contribute to the literature of prejudice through further exploring the mechanisms of prejudice towards immigrant populations.Item The relationship between minority statuses and prejudice(2009-06-02) Veve, MiaIt is important to explore prejudice to understand and learn how to decrease it. There is a central belief that ?personal knowledge reduces prejudice.? Does a person who has personal knowledge of prejudice, for example, those of minority status have less prejudice towards others? There has been considerable research on the prejudice that the majority might feel towards minorities but there is limited research on minorities? prejudice towards others. The current study focuses on the relationship between a person of self-perceived minority statuses and her or his feelings of prejudice towards others (e.g. minorities and mainstream). Previous research had found a positive correlation between fundamentalism and prejudice. This study investigated that relationship and a positive correlation was found. Another aspect that has been studied in previous research, dealing with prejudice and self reports, is social desirability. This study investigated the relationship between social desirability and multiple minority statuses and no statistical significance was found. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilized to investigate the relationship between multiple minority statuses and prejudice. The analysis showed no statistical significance on the relationship between multiple minority statuses and prejudice. There is still a lot about prejudice that remains unknown. This area of research should be investigated further to better understand minority prejudice, which in turn might lead us to overcome its negative effects.