The influence of group stereotypes on adolescents' moral reasoning

The purpose for this study was to investigate adolescents' judgments about the appropriate punishment of other adolescents for accused transgressions in situations where stereotype information was present or absent. Ninety-tw o male and 85 female predominantly European-American, ninth-grade adolescen ts made judgments about the appropriateness of punishing members of social reference groups for accused transgressions about which there was no clear evidence that the students from the group actually committed the transgress ions. In two of the four conditions the accused transgressions were consist ent with group stereotypes whereas in the other two conditions the accused transgressions were inconsistent with group stereotypes. The majority of ad olescents judged the act of punishing a group without proper evidence justi fy those decisions.