Soc Rel Project to Study Impact Of Race Prejudice in Adolescents

A researcher in Social Relations has launched a study to explore the psychological impact of racial prejudice upon adolescents.

The project, conceived by Thomas J. Cottle '59, lecturer on Social Relations, will analyze strains of segregation in a group situation. Cottle plans to take some 80 Negro and white teenagers from low-income areas in Cambridge, Somerville, and Roxbury and divide them into small, self-analytical groups.

Beginning in February, the groups will meet twice a week to discuss and analyze their reactions to racial realities and fantasies, authority figures, and personal problems. The group approach will be similar to that utilized in Soc Rel 120 section meetings.

Most of the groups will be segregated initially. The members will be told in advance, however, that the groups will later be combined and integrated.

Members of both white and Negro groups will be asked to discuss their apprehensions in regard to the coming integration. The goal is for the members to discover through group discussions, the prejudice within their personal lives.

Control Groups

Cottle plans to study the changes in personal attitudes caused by the integration of the groups. He will then compare these attitudes to those of control groups which will have integrated from the beginning of the project.

Group leaders for the project will be Soc Rel Graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Cottle will also study their behavior toward the group members in order to determine the ways that teachers and other leaders might best meet the challenges presented by such segregated groups.

Cottle hopes that the project, which is financed by the Massachusetts Higher Education Facilities Commission, will be useful in determining the merits and disadvantages of sudden integration programs such as racial bussing.

The self-analytic group, which has been used to prepare Vista Volunteers for work in racial ghettos, might also be of help to pupils who have been told that their schools will soon be integrated, Cottle suggested. By letting students find the psychological origins of their prejudice, the tensions of impending integration could be reduced, he added.