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1. The semantic representation of prejudice and stereotypes

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.03.016  

   Bhatia, Sudeep (July 2017, Cognition)
2. Reducing Prejudice Through Promoting Cross-Group Friendships

   https://doi.org/10.1177/10892680211061262  

   Killen, Melanie; Luken Raz, Katherine; Graham, Sandra (December 2021, Review of General Psychology)

   Around the globe, individuals are affected by exclusion, discrimination, and prejudice targeting individuals from racial, ethnic, and immigrant backgrounds as well as crimes based on gender, nationality, and culture (United Nations General Assembly, 2016). Unfortunately, children are often the targeted victims (Costello & Dillard, 2019). What is not widely understood is that the intergroup biases underlying systemic racism start long before adulthood with children displaying notable signs of intergroup bias, sometimes before entering grade school. Intergroup bias refers to the tendency to evaluate members of one’s own group more favorably than someone not identified with one’s group and is typically associated with prejudicial attitudes. Children are both the victims and the perpetrators of bias. In this review, we provide evidence of how biases emerge in childhood, along with an analysis of the significant role of intergroup friendships on enhancing children’s well-being and reducing prejudice in childhood. The review focuses predominantly on the context of race, with the inclusion of several other categories, such as nationality and religion. Fostering positive cross-group friendships in childhood helps to address the negative long-term consequences of racism, discrimination, and prejudice that emerges in childhood and continues through to adulthood. 

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3. Racial Prejudice Affects Representations of Facial Trustworthiness

   https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231225094  

   Hutchings, Ryan_J; Freiburger, Erin; Sim, Mattea; Hugenberg, Kurt (February 2024, Psychological Science)

   What makes faces seem trustworthy? We investigated how racial prejudice predicts the extent to which perceivers employ racially prototypical cues to infer trustworthiness from faces. We constructed participant-level computational models of trustworthiness and White-to-Black prototypicality from U.S. college students’ judgments of White (Study 1, N = 206) and Black–White morphed (Study 3, N = 386) synthetic faces. Although the average relationships between models differed across stimuli, both studies revealed that as participants’ anti-Black prejudice increased and/or intergroup contact decreased, so too did participants’ tendency to conflate White prototypical features with trustworthiness and Black prototypical features with untrustworthiness. Study 2 ( N = 324) and Study 4 ( N = 397) corroborated that untrustworthy faces constructed from participants with pro-White preferences appeared more Black prototypical to naive U.S. adults, relative to untrustworthy faces modeled from other participants. This work highlights the important role of racial biases in shaping impressions of facial trustworthiness. 

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4. Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Reduction: When and Why?

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418807705  

   Badea, Constantina; Sherman, David K. (January 2019, Current Directions in Psychological Science)
5. Creating Inclusive Environments: Enabling Children to Reject Prejudice and Discrimination

   https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-120920-041454  

   Rutland, Adam; Cameron, Lindsey; Killen, Melanie (December 2024, Annual Review of Developmental Psychology)

   Developmental psychology researchers who investigate the multifaceted nature of prejudice, shown within everyday peer interactions, emphasize the importance of creating inclusive environments for children where equity and justice are promoted. This article uses the Social Reasoning Developmental (SRD) model to explore how children and adolescents reason about social inclusion and exclusion, drawing on moral, social group, and psychological considerations. The role of bystanders in challenging social exclusion is highlighted, with a focus on promoting proactive bystander intervention to create inclusive environments. This review identifies age, group identity, group norms, intergroup contact, empathy, and theory of mind as key influences on children's and adolescents’ bystander reactions. It emphasizes that interventions promoting inclusive peer and school norms, confidence in intergroup contact, empathy, and social perspective-taking can foster inclusive environments and empower bystander action that challenges intergroup social exclusion. 

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