Sally B. Palmer

Race‐Based Humor and Peer Group Dynamics in Adolescence: Bystander Intervention and Social Exclusion

Adolescents’ evaluations of discriminatory race‐based humor and their expectations about peer responses to discrimination were investigated in 8th‐ (M age = 13.80) and 10th‐grade (M age = 16.11) primarily European‐American participants (N = 256). Older adolescents judged race‐based humor as more acceptable than did younger adolescents and were less likely to expect peer intervention. Participants who rejected discrimination were more likely to reference welfare/rights and prejudice and to anticipate that peers would intervene. Showing awareness of group processes, adolescents who rejected race‐based humor believed that peers who intervened would be more likely to be excluded. They also disapproved of exclusion more than did participants who supported race‐based humor. Results expose the complexity of situations involving subtle discrimination. Implications for bullying interventions are discussed.

The role of cognitive abilities in children's inferences about social atypicality and peer exclusion and inclusion in intergroup contexts

Children aged 6-7 years judged a loyal and a partially disloyal member of a school in terms of how typical they are within the school group and their likely acceptance by peers from the same school and a different school. Second-order mental-state understanding (SOMSU) predicted whether children thought atypical members would be included differently in the two groups. Counterfactual reasoning ability, multiple classification ability, and working memory ability did not predict childrens judgements of group members. Moreover, as predicted by the developmental subjective group dynamics model, only children with higher levels of SOMSU and who discerned differences in the typicality of normative and deviant ingroup members inferred that peers would differently include atypical individuals from the same and different groups.