Social-Cognitive-Developmental Model of Mechanisms Underlying Racial-Attitude Behavior Change.

Prejudice creates barriers for the learning and development of children from all racial and ethnic groups. With the increasing diversity of youth in North America, it is particularly timely and important to make progress toward understanding and reducing racial prejudice. Recent social and developmental research clarifies the multifaceted nature of prejudice and the need for an inter-disciplinary approach to addressing prejudice. This program of research integrates and expands advances in social psychological research on attitude change with advances in developmental research on children's cognitive capacities and limitations into the Social-Cognitive-Developmental Model of mechanisms underlying racial attitude change. This integrative model will be examined via multiple methods including observations, social-cognitive skill training, longitudinal assessments, and meta-analyses. The project will make theoretical and empirical contributions to social and developmental research on mechanisms underlying racial attitude change and will produce concrete recommendations for age-specific prejudice reduction interventions that benefit children who live and learn in a diverse society.