Currently, I’m finishing a PhD where I investigated the role of competing social norms, such as the anti-racism and ingroup-loyalty norms, on the development of 6- to 11-years-old high-status White Portuguese children’s intergroup racial attitudes towards Whites and Blacks. In particular, my research focuses on:

1. The development of intergroup racial attitudes in childhood:
Do children hold biased intergroup racial attitudes? Do children’s intergroup racial attitudes change as they grow older? How?

2. The role of specific social norms in shaping children’s intergroup racial attitudes, such as the anti-racism norm and the ingroup-loyalty norms.
Do children’s perceptions of what ingroup adults hold as the appropriate/inappropriate intergroup behaviour influences how children evaluate members of their group and other groups?

3. The processes by which children become aware of social norms, and the conditions that elicit the activation of those norms.
When do children become aware of the anti-racism and ingroup-loyalty norms, and under which conditions do these norms influence intergroup evaluations?

4. Interventions to promote positive intergroup relations within the school setting by facilitating the formation, and establishment, of egalitarian and anti-prejudice norms.

5. The relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes.
How the relationship between children’s implicit and explicit attitudes evolves in the course of childhood, and what developmental and contextual factors moderate this relationship?

(currently) PhD student in Social and Organizational Psychology, ISCTE-IUL
(2003, Jun) Lic. Social and Organizational Psychology, ISCTE-IUL