The apple does not fall far from the tree, or does it? A meta-analysis of parent–child similarity in intergroup attitudes.

Abstract

Understanding the formation of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination has long been a core topic of social psychology. Since the seminal theorizing by Allport in 1954, different views on childhood origins of prejudice have been discussed, in which the role of parental socialization varies on a scale from fundamental to negligible. This meta-analysis integrates the available empirical evidence of the past 60 years and critically discusses the current state of knowledge on parental socialization of intergroup attitudes. A random-effects model analysis of data from 131 studies on over 45,000 parent-child dyads indicated a significant medium-sized average effect size for the correlation between parental and child intergroup attitudes. The average effect size was related to study-specific variables, such as the source of parental attitude report (self vs. child reported), the conceptual overlap between measures, and the privacy of assessment. We also found significant moderations by ingroup status and size as well as child age. The latter was, however, mediated by measurement overlap. No significant effect size differences were found in relation to different components of intergroup attitudes (i.e., affective, cognitive, behavioral), nor to child or parent gender. The results unequivocally demonstrate that parent-child attitudes are related throughout childhood and adolescence. We discuss in detail whether and to what extent this interrelation can be interpreted as an indicator of parent-child socialization to allow a critical evaluation of the available contradicting theories. We furthermore address limitations of the available research and the current meta-analysis and derive implications and suggestions for future research.

Family Disruption and Intergenerational Reproduction: Comparing the Influences of Married Parents, Divorced Parents, and Stepparents

“…A substantive explanation is that for church attendance, late socialization could be more influential than early socialization. Previous evidence on age differences in religious socialization is lacking, but earlier studies on intergroup attitudes have confirmed that late socialization is more influential than early socialization (Degner and Dalege 2013).…”

Young children seek out biased information about social groups

“…are clear positive relationships between intergroup attitudes of parents and their children (Degner & Dalege, 2013). Related experimental work has also shown that children sometimes imitate the discriminatory behaviour of others (Olson, Dweck, Spelke, & Banaji, 2011).…”

Young People's Perceptions of Europe in a Time of Change

“…Some studies analyzing adolescents' attitudes toward immigrants have highlighted how parents' and peers' tolerance and xenophobia as well as inter-group friendships affect relative changes in students' pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant attitudes (Davies, Tropp, Aron, Pettigrew, & Wright, 2011;Degner & Dalege, 2013;Gniewosz & Noack, 2015;Miklikowska, 2017;van Zalk, Kerr, van Zalk, & Stattin, 2013).…”