Please join Bilkent University’s Psychology Department on Thursday for the visit of Prof. Adam Rutland.
Speaker: Adam Rutland. University of Exeter
“How do children make social and moral judgements within intergroup contexts?”
Date: Thursday, 2 November 2023
Time: 12:30
Room: C Blok Amphitheatre
Abstract:
From an early age, we are surrounded by other social beings and a complex social environment. Children have to navigate this increasingly diverse social world, which is a significant developmental achievement. By studying how and when children begin to make sense of and master social contexts we can learn about the nature of social cognition and inform educational strategies. This talk will focus on when and how children and adolescents understand and judge intergroup contexts in which social identities and intergroup relations are salient. In a progressively more diverse social world, with increased migration and globalization, children are more and more experiencing others from different social groups. They have to make difficult social and moral judgements in these intergroup contexts about who to share with, help, include or exclude and how to define themselves. These judgements have important implications since groups of children that experience sustained social rejection are known to develop social and psychological problems (e.g., mental health issues, school drop-out). In this talk I will present recent research I have conducted with colleagues into how children, with age, increasingly judge and reason about intergroup decisions; whilst simultaneously considering and giving priority to either moral (fairness, welfare) or group concerns (social identities, group norms, group dynamics). The talk will include studies into the developmental intergroup processes underlying resource allocation, the social exclusion of group deviants who don’t conform to group norms (e.g., around gender and ‘doing’ STEM) and bystander reactions to the social exclusion of immigrants.
About the speaker:
Adam Rutland, PhD, is Professor of Social Developmental Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Exeter, U.K. He is also a Special Elected Member of the Graduate Faculty, Graduate School, University of Maryland, College Park, U.S.A. Prof. Rutland received his Ph.D. from the University of Stirling, Scotland. He has contributed widely to various books and journals (including Psychological Science, Child Development, Developmental Psychology and Perspectives on Psychological Science) and is the co-author (with Melanie Killen) of Children and Social Exclusion: Morality, Prejudice, and Group Identity (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). He is also co-editor of the Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Group Processes in Children and Adolescents (with Drew Nesdale and Christia Spears Brown) and the Sage Library in Developmental Psychology five volume Reader on Childhood Social Development (with Peter K. Smith). He was a founding member of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Committee on Equity and Justice in Childhood. Prof. Rutland’s research interests are: Social-cognitive development, prejudice, intergroup relationships, social reasoning and morality; Peer group exclusion, group dynamics and victimization; Cross-group friendships, intergroup contact, psychological well-being and Interventions to reduce prejudice; Children’s acculturation, ethnic and national identification.
Email: a.rutland@exeter.ac.uk
Website: https://psychology.exeter.ac.uk/staff/profile/index.php?web_id=Adam_Rutland