Addressing ethnic prejudice in youth: Developmental trajectories and associations with educational identity

Abstract

Studying how attitudes develop in the transition from late adolescence to emerging adulthood offers unique insights into future generations’ perceptions of society and of others. However, findings on ethnic prejudice during this life period are mixed. The current research aims to examine the development of affective and cognitive ethnic prejudice, adopting a person-centered approach. Furthermore, it examines the associations between educational identity processes and prejudice. A sample of 297 Italian adolescents ( Mage = 17.48, SDage = 0.79, 37.8% males) participated in a five-wave longitudinal study. At the mean level, cognitive prejudice decreased slightly over time, while affective prejudice remained stable. Additionally, rank-order stability coefficients were high ( r ≥ .526). Moreover, for each dimension of prejudice (i.e., cognitive and affective) taken separately, three groups of participants were identified based on their high, moderate, or low scores, respectively. Finally, higher levels of educational identity in-depth exploration at baseline significantly increased the chances of adolescents falling into the low rather than the moderate group for both cognitive and affective prejudice. Conversely, it significantly reduced the chances of being in the high compared to the moderate group for affective prejudice. This study highlights the importance of considering multiple components of prejudice and their reciprocal associations with identity processes to identify at-risk segments of the adolescent and emerging adult populations.