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Articles

Intergroup Socialization: The Influence of Parents’ Family Communication Patterns on Adult Children’s Racial Prejudice and Tolerance

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of family communication environments on children’s intergroup socialization. Adult children (n = 200) reported on their parents’ conformity and conversation orientations and their own racial attitudes and intergroup orientations. Results evidenced ingroup bias, social dominance, and identification with parent as mediators of the positive relationship between conformity orientation and racial prejudice and the negative relationship between conformity orientation and racial tolerance. Results also revealed that children from consensual and protective families harbor the most racial prejudice and least racial tolerance. Future directions related to intergroup contact interventions, racially diverse families, and qualitative assessments of parent–child interactions are discussed.

Notes

[1] The socio- and concept-orientations (Mukherji, Citation2005, Citation2009; Tims, Citation1986) were discussed as the updated conformity and conversation orientations (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, Citation1990) in order to maintain consistency in the current study.

[2] Given the study’s focus on global racial prejudice, the “White/Black” references on the Modern and Old Fashioned Racism Scale (McConahay, Citation1986) were modified to reflect “White/racial minorities” as seen in the Intolerant Schema Measure (Aosved, Long, & Voller, Citation2009).

[3] Given the study’s focus on race, the item on the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale (Fuertes et al., Citation2000) that references people with disabilities was eliminated.

[4] Hayes (Citation2013) bootstrapping method is preferred over Baron and Kenny (Citation1986) causal steps method because it accounts for and contrasts multiple mediators, estimates the total and direct effects, and assesses the direction and size of indirect effects.

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