National Identity and Ingroup-Outgroup Attitudes in Children: The Role of Socio-Historical Settings

This special issue addresses whether differences in national identifications and national attitudes in children from different national groups result not only from processes of knowledge acquisition but also from cohort and context effects. Collectively, the studies examined 7- and 11-year-old children living in 12 different national settings that have or have not experienced violence or war in the recent past. Findings show that theories predicting universal developmental courses for national identifications and attitudes cannot be maintained across different socio-historical and political settings, and that much greater attention needs to be paid to the specificities of the particular contexts in which children develop.