• Social Reasoning about Exclusion and Rights. This project is a multi-site investigation of the role of social experience and intergroup contact on children’s and adolescents’ social reasoning about exclusion and rights in peer relationship and parent-child contexts. Funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Melanie Killen (University of Maryland), David Crystal (Georgetown University), & Martin Ruck (CUNY, Graduate Center, NYC).
  
  
• Children’s and Adolescents’ Racial Biases about Peer Relationships. The goals of this project are to investigate children’s and adolescents’ intergroup bias regarding peer relationships in familiar, everyday situations. We are investigating explicit and implicit biases about peer encounters in morally-relevant peer relationship contexts. Funded by the National Science Foundation. Melanie Killen, Heidi McGlothlin, Alexandra Henning, & Alexander O’Connor.

• Adolescents’ and Young Adults’ Evaluations of Video Games. This project investigates adolescents’ and young adults’ evaluations of, and attitudes about video games, and whether individuals perceive that stereotypic images should change, and whether it affects players attitudes and behavior. Melanie Killen, Alaina Brenick, Alexandra Henning, Alexander O’Connor, & Michael J. Collins.

• Korean Children's Evaluations of Exclusion in the Home and School Contexts. The goal of this set of studies is to examine Korean-American and Korean children's evaluations of exclusion in the home context. Jennie Lee-Kim, Yoonjung Park, Yunhee Shin, & Melanie Killen.

• Children's Implicit Racial Attitudes. We are investigating how European-American and African-American children make decisions about friends based on a number of factors, including physical and racial features, shared interests, and hobbies. Heidi McGlothlin, Melanie Killen, Nancy Margie, & Stefanie Sinno.

• Children's Decision-Making about Social Relationships: The Impact of Similarity, Racial Attitudes, and Intergroup Contact. In this project, we are investigating the impact of intergroup contact on children's decision-making about similarity of cross-race and same-race peer dyads, as well as on racial attitudes. Heidi McGlothlin & Melanie Killen.

• Children’s evaluation’s of Parental Roles in the Home and Workforce. We are investigating how young children evaluate father’s decisions to stay at home and mothers’ decisions to work outside of the home, along with their views about division of labor in the home. Stefanie Sinno and Melanie Killen.

• Adolescents’ Evaluations of Parental Expectations about Cross-race Relationships, and the Role of Intergroup Contact. This project examines adolescents’ perceptions of parental messages about interracial relationships. Christina Edmonds and Melanie Killen (dissertation).
  


• Aggression, Peer Victimization, and Bullying.
This project draws on social information processing and moral reasoning models to understand children's aggression and victimization. Nancy Margie and Melanie Killen (dissertation).

• Exclusion, Peer Harassment, and Victimization. The project analyzes Korean and American adolescents’ evaluations of multiple forms of exclusion as a function of individual traits of the victim (shy, aggressive) and group membership (gender, nationality). Yoonjung Park and Melanie Killen (dissertation).
  
  
• Evaluations of Conflict Resolution and its Relationship to Exposure to Violence among Displaced and Non-Displaced Colombian Children. The goal of this research is to determine how Colombian children who have been exposed to violence evaluate moral transgressions methods of conflict resolution. Alicia Ardila-Rey and Melanie Killen.

International Collaborations

• Social Judgments and Emotion Attributions about Exclusion: A Swiss Study. Investigating Swiss adolescents’ judgments and emotion attributions regarding their evaluations of peer exclusion decisions and their attributions of emotions for three contexts: exclusion based on nationality, gender, and personality characteristics. Tina Malti, University of Zurich, Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, Luciano Gasser, Teacher Training University Central Switzerland, Melanie Killen.

• Tolerance, Exclusion, and Multiculturalism in The Netherlands. Dutch children and adolescents will be surveyed regarding their judgments about exclusion and group identity. Maike Gieling, Maykel Verkuyten, and Jochaim Thijs, Utretch University, and Melanie Killen, University of Maryland.

• Spanish Children’s Evaluations of Exclusion of Gypsies and Ethnic Minorities in Madrid, Spain. This Project involves understanding how Spanish and Latino/a children evaluate exclusión in Spain. Ileana Enesco, Silvia Guerrero, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Alejandra Navarro, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Melanie Killen.

• Japanese and American Children's Evaluations of Group Exclusion and Deviance This project investigated how Japanese and U.S. children evaluated peer group deviance and individual traits as a basis for exclusion. David Crystal, Georgetown University; Hirozumi Watanabe, Ehime University, Japan, and Melanie Killen.

• Colombian Children's Representations of Justice. This project is aimed to determine how Colombian children evaluate justice. Diana M. Posada, Luz S. Isaza, Martha L. Salinas, Universidad de Antioquia; Melanie Killen, Alicia Ardila-Rey, University of Maryland.

• Korean and Korean-American children’s evaluations of autonomy and peer relationships. This project is designed to understand how children in different cultures evaluate parental decision to allow children autonomy to choose gender stereotypic and non-stereotypic peer activities. Jennie Lee-Kim, Melanie Killen, Yoonjung Park, Professor Kyung Ja Park and Jihyun Kim, Yonsei University, Korea.