Temporary Residential Cohabitation of Children from Northern Ireland

Abstract

An exploratory investigation was conducted to assess the evaluations of self and others by boys and girls from Northern Ireland both at the beginning and at the conclusion of a six-week residential cohabitation experience in the United States. Sixteen boys and 16 girls, ten to 12 years of age, participated in a program which paired Catholic and Protestant children. A methodology was developed to increase the social acceptability of the differential evaluations and to reduce experimenter demand. The children set in rank order the attractiveness of Christian names. The relative ranking of roommate names decreased while, for many children, the relative ranking of own name increased during the period of the program. The rankings of names of the other children in the travelling group, unaffected by the intervention, reflected an own-gender preference but not a own-religion preference. The rankings of stereotypic names reflected both an own-gender and an own-religion preference both before and after the intervention.