Social Exclusion : The Interplay Between Morality and Group Processes

Abstract

Children’s emerging understanding of morality, including moral principles such as fairness and the welfare of others, is central to how children begin to evaluate and reason about social exclusion. Yet children also develop an understanding that social exclusion within intergroup contexts (i.e., when in-groups and out-groups are salient in the context) can be justified using reasoning focusing on group processes, including concerns about group identity, group norms or expectations, and effective group functioning. This chapter highlights how the interaction between moral development and group processes relate to children’s and adolescents’ social exclusion judgments, reasoning, and bystander responses. The chapter describes the social reasoning developmental (SRD) approach to social exclusion and explains how it provides a framework for understanding how children evaluate and reason about social exclusion. Recent research on children’s and adolescents’ evaluations and reasoning surrounding social exclusion within intergroup contexts is described, and we demonstrate how our perspective can inform approaches to reducing social exclusion and inequality, with a focus on group processes at both the peer group and societal levels (e.g., schools).