Ethnic prejudice is one of the most persistent and tenacious forms of prejudice in attitudinal research. The age-stability theory assumes that social attitudes are already developed during adolescence and tend to be stable throughout the life-course. If this assumption holds, research on the formation of prejudice should focus on adolescents instead of adults. In this context, parents are often seen as the primary socialization agent influencing attitudes of children. As such, parents may shape to a large extent the intergroup attitudes and relations of their children.
Given specific conditions, intergroup contact is considered highly effective in reducing prejudice. It is found that intergroup contact patterns can be transmitted from parent to child, but also that a child’s intergroup contact can reduce the intergenerational transmission of prejudice.
The goal of the paper is to investigate the role of parental intergroup contact on the intergenerational transmission of ethnic prejudice. We hypothesize that parental intergroup contact can affect adolescents' prejudice in three ways. First, parental intergroup contact can influence adolescents’ likelihood to directly contact ethnic minority members, which is expected to influence their levels of ethnic prejudice. Second, parental intergroup contact can influence parental prejudice, and relying on the social learning theory, we expect adolescents to copy the attitudes of their parents. Finally, we also expect a direct effect from parental intergroup contact on children’s prejudice: children who see their parents interacting with minority groups will be more tolerant toward these minority groups.
We make use of a new study among 3,426 15-year-old adolescents and both their parents in Belgium. Structural equation modeling will be used to specify the model.
