Adolescents’ and emerging adults’ judgments and justifications for social inclusion or exclusion of language-outgroup members: Language is just part of the story

Language becomes an important intergroup category for children from early on in their lives; however, few studies have examined the role language plays in social inclusion and exclusion. This study examines how adolescents and emerging adults in China make inclusion judgments of language-outgroup members and what reasons they use to justify their inclusion judgments. High school and university students ( N = 376, 63.3% female) were recruited to complete a survey designed to examine their inclusion judgments and justifications. Our findings indicate that participants made different inclusion judgments toward speakers of different languages, and language was the most frequently used justification. They also used group identity, personal choice, and autonomy, group functioning, nationality, moral, and political/historical reasons as justifications. Adolescents were found to be more exclusive than emerging adults and used group identity and political/historical reasons more often to justify their inclusion judgments. The findings add to our understanding of the sophisticated ways in which adolescents and emerging adults make social decisions.

German Pre-service Teachers' Evaluations of and Reactions to Interethnic Social Exclusion Scenarios

This study investigated pre-service teachers' evaluations, reactions, and interventions with regard to interethnic exclusion scenarios in Germany. More specifically, we focused on pre-service teachers (N = 145, 99 female, Mage= 21.34) in the role of observers of exclusion among students. Using hypothetical scenarios in which either a German or a Turkish boy was excluded by other children of his class, we assessed teachers' evaluations of this exclusion behavior. This included evaluating how likely teachers were to intervene in the situation and what they would specifically do. The aim of this research was to examine whether the origin of an excluded student represents a relevant category for teachers' evaluations of and reactions to social exclusion. In addition, we aimed to determine whether teachers include aspects related to group functioning in their considerations. The analyses demonstrated that teachers generally reject social exclusion, with female participants rejecting exclusion even more than male participants. Further, participants evaluated the exclusion of a Turkish protagonist as more reprehensible than the exclusion of a German protagonist. Regarding the likelihood of intervention, the origin of the excluded person was only relevant for male participants; i.e., they were less likely to intervene when the excluded person was German than when the excluded person was Turkish. Analyses of teachers' reasoning revealed their strong focus on inclusion as a social norm, especially in cases of interethnic exclusion. That is, when participants reasoned about the exclusion of the Turkish protagonist, they referred to the social norm of inclusion much more than when talking about the German protagonist. In contrast, aspects related to group functioning were scarcely of importance. In terms of the specific actions that participants would undertake as a reaction to the exclusion situation, no differences related to the origin of the excluded person were found. Hence, the origin of the excluded person factored into both the evaluation of the exclusion and the likelihood of intervention, but once the decision to intervene was made, there were no differences in the specific actions. The results are discussed in light of practical implications and teacher training as well as in terms of implications for future research.

POSTMODERN SOCIETY AND COVID-19 PANDEMIC: OLD, NEW AND SCARY

Critical events of a dangerous progression, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, may become the turning points in the functioning of entire societies. Such events obviously foster changes. They disrupt the sense of ontological security, generate fears and enforce change in the organization of social relations, also in a creative and positive manner. In addition to these effects, they also induce many others. They are a magnifier enabling you to see how modern societies are functioning. Therefore, a pandemic allows to see and describe more clearly the characteristics of postmodern human communities. Some of these characteristics (e.g. group functioning) are essentially constant and unchangeable for humans as a species. In turn, some features are very specific, characteristic for a given time, type of events and nature of participating communities. In this text, based on the desk-research methodology and non-systematic participant observation, I indicate the unchanging characteristics of human communities that emerge in the moments of crisis. I also present the specific features of postmodern communities that have been highlighted by the pandemic. I try to indicate the effects of the pandemic on social relations in the future.

Cyber-Moms Facing Motherhood

Mothers and mothers-to-be often become e-health users because of their need for sharing emotional and practical parental experiences. In this sense, web forums seem to positively contribute to parenting skills and transition to motherhood. This study aims at exploring how 379 Italian mothers use two Italian forums, the manifest and latent contents of their interactions, and the emotional connections between their own maternal experiences and the e-group dynamics. The qualitative analysis of 7433 comments pointed out five main themes, describing how mothers make sense of their experiences through the online dimension: the group; I am; personal experience; perspective knowhow; tech-moms. This study confirms that parenting experience represents a big challenge for rising mothers. Moreover, it shows that the e-groups can alternatively reproduce a peer group functioning and a feeding breast, a reassuring container with holding functions, or a “toilet breast”, encouraging progressive as well as regressive movements.

Taking Stock of Youth Sport Group Dynamics Research: A Scoping Review

Given the prevalence of group contexts in sport and the importance of the social environment for motivating youth participants, understanding and enhancing group dynamics are critical to facilitate youths’ participation in, and development through, sport. The current objective was to report on a scoping review that was employed to summarize research focused on the dynamics in youth sport groups. The review identified several themes that have been focused on with regularity (i.e., cohesion) and identified others with opportunities for greater incorporation in youth sport research (e.g., cooperation). Furthermore, encouragement is provided to move beyond survey-based, cross-sectional research and to give greater consideration to a developmental approach to understanding child and youth perceptions of the groups to which they belong. Overall, there are many opportunities for researchers to study the dynamics of youth sport groups with an aim to enhance the experiences of young athletes and facilitate group functioning.

On Ladders and Pyramids: Hierarchy’s Shape Determines Relationships and Performance in Groups

Hierarchies take different forms, which individuals mentally represent using different geometric shapes. We propose and empirically demonstrate that individuals’ mental representations of the shape hierarchy takes affect its consequences. Five studies compared two common mental representations of hierarchy shapes—ladders and pyramids—to explore whether, why, and how individuals’ perceptions of hierarchy’s shape undermine constructive relationships within groups and group performance. Study 1 demonstrated that individuals commonly mentally represent hierarchies as ladders and pyramids. In Studies 2 and 3, employees who perceived their workplace hierarchies to be shaped like ladders (as compared with pyramids) experienced worse intragroup relationships. Finally, Studies 4 and 5 experimentally manipulated groups’ hierarchical shape in the lab and found that ladder-shaped hierarchies undermined social relationships and group performance relative to pyramid-shaped hierarchies. Taken together, these findings enhance our understanding of hierarchies’ multifaceted consequences and help shed light on the (dis)utility of hierarchy for group functioning.