Peer ethnic/racial socialization in adolescence: Current knowledge and future directions

Peer groups are a central socialization setting in adolescence, and an emerging body of research has started to investigate the influence of peers on how adolescents understand, think about, and act on issues of ethnicity and race. This commentary summarizes the existing research that has investigated peer ethnic/racial socialization (ERS) and its associations with adolescent outcomes, highlighting the need to better understand: (1) what peers are doing related to issues of ethnicity/race; (2) who these peers are; (3) in what contexts peer ERS occurs; and (4) how peer ERS changes over time in adolescence. We hope the commentary, along with recent theoretical work seeking to unpack the complexity of ethnic/racial messages that young people receive across various developmental settings, will help generate more research to better understand the content, sources, and context of ERS, as well as its developmental changes over time. Highlights: Peer groups are a central socialization setting in adolescence, and an emerging body of research hasstarted to examine the influence of peers on how adolescents understand, think about, and act on issues of ethnicity and race. This commentary summarizes the existing research that has investigated peer ethnic/racial socialization (ERS) and its associations with adolescent outcomes. The commentary highlights the need to betterunderstand 1) what peers are doing related to issues of ethnicity/race, 2)who these peers are, 3) in what contexts peer ERS occurs, and 4) how peerERS changes over time in adolescence. The commentary seeks to generate more researchto better unpack the complexity of ERS across various developmental settings.