Identity, prejudice and duplicity in development

Atelier interdisciplinaire organisé par Philippe Rochat, résident à l'IEA de Paris

What we know about children is mainly their bright side: how precocious they are and how they develop to become more intelligent, more empathic, better problem solvers, better collaborators, and in general, more conscientious human beings in relation to others. But such emphasis overlooks the other side of such developing propensities, the fact that children also develop to become what we are as adults: capable of deception, duplicity, prone to prejudices toward others, and much delusions about the self. Obviously, this fact has consequences on how we, as individuals and groups, behave in relation to others.
The idea here is to devote more thoughts, generate interdisciplinary exchanges, discussions, and collaborations with other researchers from the natural and the human sciences (neuroscience, philosophy, development, anthropology) on the origins of prejudice, duplicity, and ostracism in relation to the development of identity in children.
We want to re-visit the existing empirical and theoretical literature on the relation between identity formation in children and their developing propensity toward prejudice (social stereotypes), ostracism (social exclusion), and duplicity (lies and deception toward others but also the self). We aim at fostering more reflection and more ideas for empirical research on the source of abuse like ostracism and prejudice, from a developmental perspective, trying to relate the origins these crucial social issues to self and identity development in children.
 
The aim of the workshop is to discuss freely this set of questions, plan for a larger symposium to be held in 2015.

Les inscriptions sont closes