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An examination of family socialisation processes as moderators of racial prejudice transmission between adolescents and their parents
Fiona A White
School of Psychology, University of Sydney, NSW
Melanie Gleitzman
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, NSW
Abstract
This study extends previous research reporting correlations between adolescents' and parents' racial prejudice attitudes by examining how the family socialisation processes of cohesion, adaptability, and communication moderate both subtle and blatant prejudice transmission.
The results, based upon a study of 93 adolescents and their parents, revealed that parents' and adolescents' prejudice scores were significantly correlated, and high composite scores of family socialisation processes were significantly related to low levels of prejudice for adolescents and fathers.
Family socialisation processes were also found to significantly moderate the relationship between mothers' and adolescents' subtle racial attitudes - the relationship was strongest for mother-adolescent dyads reporting low and moderate levels of family socialisation processes compared to mother-adolescent dyads reporting high levels of family socialisation processes.
Implications of how these findings can improve our understanding of the transmission of racial prejudice between parents and adolescents are discussed.
Keywords
racial prejudice, family processes, socialisation of attitudes, parent-adolescent transmission
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