Black-White Racial Context and U.S. American Youths’ Moral Judgments of and Responses to Social Exclusion Bullying

Abstract

Bullied adolescents experience myriad poor outcomes, yet certain responses can have significant mitigatory effects. However, research has yet to examine how the racial context of these interactions affects adolescents’ evaluations of and beliefs about responding to social-exclusionary bullying (SEB). The sample comprised 219 ninth-grade Black (N = 84; females = 46) and White (N = 135; females = 81) students (M_age = 14.84, SD = 0.68; N_females= 92) recruited from 5 schools in a large, racially diverse, middle-class Mid-Atlantic metropolitan area of the United States. Participants judged the wrongfulness of 4 scenarios of same- and cross-race SEB and selected how the victims should respond to the victimization. Responses were coded as aggressive, assertive, adult assistance-seeking, or avoidant. Gender, scenario, and response strategy main and interaction effects emerged. The Black-excluder and White-victim scenario was rated least wrong. Assertive responses were selected more often in scenarios with White-excluders; avoidant responses were selected more often in scenarios with Black-excluders. Results suggest that racial context relates significantly to adolescents’ evaluations of and responses to SEB scenarios.

Keywords:

• Adolescents
• intergroup relations
• racial context
• response strategies
• social exclusion bullying

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Rui Wu and Malak Zureiqi for their assistance with the preparation and editing of the manuscript.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Author contributions

AB conceptualized the study presented in this paper, assisted in the collecting of data and data entry, drafted all parts of the manuscript, guided, helped, run, and interpreted the results, conducted finishing edits, and oversaw all aspects of manuscript submission. NGM conceptualized the full study from which these data are drawn from and carried out all data collection, entry, and coded at the initial stage, she helped to draft parts of the manuscript, she was instrumental in editing the manuscript. The authors AB and NGM share first-authorship because of the instrumental role NGM played in the broader conceptualization of the study from which these data are taken, whereas AB conceptualized the study presented in this manuscript. MCK helped conceptualize the study, collect data, run analyses, and edited all parts of the manuscript.

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alaina Brenick

Alaina Brenick (she | her | hers), is currently Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Health, and Human Development at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Brenick is a scholar-activist who examines how diverse social groups in the U.S. and other regions of the world—sometimes with vastly different societal structures, norms, and expectations—experience, reason about, and respond to intergroup peer relations and group-based victimization and inequity. She is committed to translating her work into practice. Her research provides a fundamental knowledge base for creating contextually and developmentally appropriate intervention programs, designed to reduce individual prejudice and systemic oppression and promote socially just and equitable intergroup relations.

Nancy Geyelin Margie

Nancy Geyelin Margie (she | her | hers), earned her Ph.D. in Human Development at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Margie’s work focuses on human service programs for healthy child development and family well-being. Her research interests include: intergroup bullying/victimization, including social exclusion, and social and moral reasoning about victimization, among others.

Megan Clark Kelly

Megan Clark Kelly (she | her | hers), is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Siena College. Dr. Kelly’s research training and expertise is in the area of social and moral development, with a focus on how children and adolescents reason about exclusion in social contexts and how stereotypes influence children and adolescents’ social reasoning.