A central feature of adolescence is engagement in the process of understanding oneself both in terms of

personal identity (e.g., What are my goals, values, beliefs, and personal choices? What are the continuous
aspects of my personal character?) and social identity (e.g., Who am I in relation to my reference groups?
How connected am I to these groups and what do they mean for my personal identity?). For all
adolescents, a sense of belonging to a group is of paramount importance for healthy functioning, and for
ethnic minority youth, identity exploration in terms of racial, ethnic, or cultural heritage is often
especially salient. So what happens when a teen is harassed, teased, or rejected based on a central aspect
of their social identity like race? Well, growing evidence shows that when kids are victimized because of
social identity factors it can be more harmful than other, more general forms of victimization (Russell,
Sinclear, Poteat, & Koenig, 2012). This suggests a need for researchers to better understand how the
specific content of an insult is related to youths well-being. But theres even more that we dont really
understand. Specifically, what if the person who is doing the teasing or rejecting is someone I consider to
be a member of my in-group? Does this make a difference? Evidence from social psychology research
suggests yes. Researchers have hypothesized that the consequences of group rejection may vary based
on two key characteristics: whether the rejection comes from an in-group or an out-group member, and
whether the cause of rejection is something that is stable/unchangeable (like race) or
unstable/changeable (like physical appearance; Jetten, Branscombe, & Spears,
2006). Based on these dimensions, its argued that you may be worse off if youre
rejected by an in-group based on a characteristic that you cant change than if
youre rejected by an out-group for that same characteristic. For example, a
Chinese-American teen may be more negatively affected if he experiences ethnicbased harassment or rejection from other Chinese-American peers than if he is
harassed by non-Chinese peers. There are a couple of reasons why this may be the
case (although I think we need to know a lot more). First, given the salience of
social identity and social group membership in adolescence, it may be particularly
stressful if a youth cannot turn to other in-group members for support when they
are the ones rejecting him. Second, additional social psychology research has
shown that if an in-group member is perceived as violating group norms, other ingroup members may treat him especially harshly; indeed, the deviant may
receive harsher treatment from his in-group than he might from out-group
members (Hogg, Fielding, & Darley, 2005). In addition to the centrality of identity
development, there are two other factors that may be at play in adolescence that
are particularly relevant to this issue. The first is called own-group conformity
pressure, which refers a sense of pressure to adhere to an often implicit set of
rules about what it means to be a group member (e.g., Chinese American teens in
our school are supposed to act this way and not that way; Contrada, et al., 2001).
While the actual rules may not be explicitly stated, they are likely shaped by
societal stereotypes perpetuated on a regular basis by various sources (e.g., media,
etc.). Adding to this is the finding that when social content, like social group
membership, is involved, adolescents tend to use stereotype-based information to
inform their judgments (Albert & Steinberg, 2011). So teens may have a tendency
to defer to stereotypes when defining in-group and out-group boundaries. In our
own work were just starting to explore some of these issues. We began by

conducting focus group discussions with Black college students to learn more about
their experiences with subtle forms of discrimination, or racial microaggressions.
What we found was that in addition to talking about transgressions perpetrated by
out-group members, many students also talked about race-related harassment that
came from same-race peers. In most cases these incidents centered on narrow
definitions of authenticity; youth were accused of not being Black enough by their
peers based on their behavior, speech, dress, etc. At the same time, no one could
exactly say what being Black enough really meant or looked like, aside from a
general feeling that it was grounded in stereotypes. Importantly, those who
experienced these in-group insults and rejections felt confused and hurt, and a few
recounted that the experience was tremendously stressful. While theres a sizeable
body of research demonstrating that experiences with racial or ethnic discrimination
are related to negative outcomes, the field is only just beginning to consider the
nuances involved. For example recent work by Aprile Benner and Sandra Graham
(2012) shows that discrimination from school staff negatively affects academic
performance, while discrimination from peers is related to psychological
maladjustment. However, I dont think we currently have a very good
understanding of how kids might be differentially affected when the source of the
discriminatory treatment is an in-group member, or what conditions might foster
the likelihood of in-group rejection. Given the salience of social identity and the
paramount importance of group belonging in adolescence, I think its an area that
requires further study so we have a better understanding of how to support youths
healthy development.