In this study, we examined what contextual factors influence adolescents’ judgments and reasoning about spousal retribution. Adolescents were drawn from Central and Northern Israel and consisted of 2,324 Arab and Jewish students (Grades 7-11). The study was set up in a 2 (Arab/Jewish respondent) × 2 (spousal retribution scenarios) factorial design. Our findings suggest that societal and cultural norms may be more powerful contextual variables than group stereotypes in influencing Arab and Jewish adolescents’ evaluations of spousal retribution. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Aboud, F. ( 1988). Children and prejudice. New York: Basil Blackwell.
2.
Aboud, F. ( 1992). Conflict and group relations. In C. Shantz & W. Hartup (Eds.), Conflict in child and adolescent development (pp. 356-379). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
3.
Aronson, E., Wilson, T., & Akert, R. ( 1994). Social psychology: The heart and the mind. New York: HarperCollins College.
4.
Astor, R. ( 1994). Children’s moral reasoning about family and peer violence: The role of provocation and retribution. Child Development , 65, 1054-1067.
5.
Astor, R. ( 1998). Moral reasoning about school violence: Informational assumptions about harm within school subcontexts. Educational Psychologist, 33, 207-221.
6.
Astor, R., & Behre, W. ( 1997). Violent and nonviolent children’s and parents’ reasoning about family and peer violence. Behavioral Disorders , 22, 231-245.
7.
Barakat, H. ( 1985). The Arab family and the challenge of social transformation . In E. Fernea (Ed.), Women and the family in the Middle East: New voices of change (pp. 27-48). Austin : University of Texas Press.
8.
Behre, W., Astor, R., & Meyer, H. ( 2001). Elementary- and middle-school teachers’ reasoning about intervening in school violence: An examination of violence-prone school subcontexts. Journal of Moral Education, 30, 131-153.
9.
Cole, C., Arafat, C., Tidhar, C., Zidan, W., Fox, N., Killen, M., . . . Yung, F. ( 2000). "So they will be friends." The educational impact of Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim, a television series for Israeli and Palestinian children. Report presented at the Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim symposium, Jerusalem.
10.
Crocker, J., & Major, B. ( 1989). Social stigma and self-esteem: The self-protective properties of stigma. Psychological Review, 96, 608-630.
11.
Cummings, E., & Davies, P. ( 1994). Children and marital conflict: The impact of family dispute and resolution. New York: Guilford .
12.
Duncan, B. ( 1976). Differential social perception and attribution of intergroup violence: Testing the lower limits of stereotyping of Blacks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 590-598.
13.
Duncan, B. ( 1979). The effects of race of harm-doer and victim on social perception and attributional behavior. Journal of Psychology , 101, 103-105.
14.
English, D., Marshal, D., & Stewart, A. ( 2003). Effects of family violence on child behavior and health during early childhood. Journal of Family Violence, 18, 43-57.
15.
Haj-Yahia, M.M. ( 1998a). A patriarchal perspective of beliefs about wife beating among Palestinian men from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Journal of Family Issues, 19, 595-621.
16.
Haj-Yahia, M.M. ( 1998b). Perceptions of abusive and violent husbands by engaged Arab men in Israel. Journal of Social Psychology, 138, 772-786.
17.
Hirschfeld, L. ( 1994). The child’s representation of human groups. In D. Medin (Ed.)The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 31, pp. 133-183). San Diego, CA: Academic.
18.
Hirschfeld, L. ( 1996). Race in the making: Cognition, culture, and the child’s construction of human kinds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
19.
Horn, S., Killen, M., & Stangor, C. ( 1999). The influence of group stereotypes on adolescents’ moral reasoning. Journal of Early Adolescence, 19, 98-113.
20.
Jost, J., & Banaji, M. ( 1994). The role of system-justification and the problem of false consciousness. British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1-27.
21.
Jouriles, E., Norwood, W., McDonald, R., & Peters, B. ( 2001). Domestic violence and child adjustment. In J. H. Grych & F. D. Fincham (Eds.), Interparental conflict and child development: Theory, research, and application (pp. 315-336). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
22.
Killen, M., & Stangor, C. ( 2001). Children’s social reasoning about inclusion and exclusion in gender and race peer group contexts. Child Development , 72, 174-186.
23.
Margolin, G., & Gordis, E., (2000). The effects of family and community violence on children. Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 445-479.
24.
McDonald, R., Jouriles, E., Ramisetty-Mikler, S., Caetano, R., & Green, C. ( 2006). Estimating the number of American children living in partner-violent families. Journal of Family Psychology, 20, 137-142.
25.
Meyer, H., Astor, R., & Behre, W. ( 2002). Teachers’ reasoning about school violence: The role of gender and location. Contemporary Educational Psychology , 27, 499-528.
26.
Nucci, L. ( 1981). The development of personal concepts: A domain distinction from moral or social concepts. Child Development, 52, 114-121.
27.
Pitner, R., & Astor, R. ( 2008). Children’s reasoning about poverty, physical deterioration, danger, and retribution in neighborhood contexts. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 28, 327-338.
28.
Pitner, R., Astor, R., Benbenishty, R., Haj-Yahia, M.M., & Zeira, A. ( 2003a). The effects of group stereotypes on adolescents’ reasoning about peer retribution. Child Development, 74, 413-425.
29.
Pitner, R., Astor, R., Benbenishty, R., Haj-Yahia, M.M., & Zeira, A. ( 2003b). Adolescents’ approval of peer and spousal retribution in their culture versus other cultures: The role of group stereotypes. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 21, 221-242.
30.
Sagar, H., & Schofield, J. ( 1980). Racial and behavioral cues in Black and White children’s perceptions of ambiguously aggressive acts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 590-598.
31.
Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. ( 1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. New York: Cambridge University Press.
32.
Smetana, J. ( 1985). Children’s impressions of moral and conventional transgressors. Developmental Psychology, 21, 715-724.
33.
Theimer, C., Killen, M., & Stangor, C. ( 2001). Preschool children’s evaluations of exclusion in gender-stereotypic contexts. Developmental Psychology, 37, 1-10.
34.
Tisak, M., & Turiel, E. ( 1988). Variation in seriousness of transgressions and children’s moral and conventional concepts. Developmental Psychology , 24, 352-357.
35.
Turiel, E. ( 1983). The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention . Cambridge, England: Cambridge University.
36.
Turiel, E. ( 1998). The development of morality. In N. Eisenberg (Volume Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (pp. 863-932). New York: Wiley.
37.
Wainryb, C. ( 1991). Understanding differences in moral judgments: The role of informational assumptions. Child Development, 62, 840-851.
