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-two male and 85 female, predominantly European-American, ninth-grade adolescents 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 transgressions. In two of the four conditions the accused transgressions were consistent with group stereotypes whereas in the other two conditions the accused transgressions were inconsistent with group stereotypes. The majority of adolescents judged the act of punishing a group without proper evidence as wrong and used moral reasons to justify those decisions.