More Kindness, Less Prejudice against Immigrants? A Preliminary Study with Adolescents

Prejudice against immigrants is a relevant research topic within social psychology. Researchers identified several individual variables affecting anti-immigrant prejudice, such as morality and personality. However, until now, prejudice has never been studied in relation to kindness, which might be a significant protective factor against prejudice. Based on Kohlberg's theory of moral judgement, four stage dimensions of kindness were identified, from egocentric to authentic kindness (i.e., a means for social progress and improvement). This study aims to explore the relationship between the four kindness dimensions and blatant and subtle prejudice against immigrants in adolescence, by also considering the moderating role of adolescents' sex. It involved 215 Italian participants (77% girls), who were asked to fill in a self-report questionnaire. Results showed that boys scored higher on egocentric kindness than girls, but no sex differences emerged for prejudice. Egocentric and extrinsically motivated kindness appeared to be risk factors for prejudice, whereas the most authentic form of kindness was a protective factor. In addition, adolescents' sex moderated the relationship between egocentric kindness and blatant prejudice, whereby this association was stronger for boys. The implications of these findings, the study's limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed

Ethanol exposed maturing rat cerebellar granule cells show impaired energy metabolism and increased cell death after oxygen-glucose deprivation

Alcohol, a widely abused drug, has deleterious effects on the immature nervous system. This study investigates the effect of chronic in vitro ethanol exposure on the metabolism of immature rat cerebellar granular cells (CGCs) and on their response to oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD). Primary CGC cultures were exposed to ethanol (100 mM in culture medium) or to control ethanol-free medium starting day one in vitro (DIV1). At DIV8, the expression of ATP synthase gene ATP5g3 was quantified using real-time PCR, then cultures were exposed to 3 hours of OGD or normoxic conditions. Subsequently, cellular metabolism was assessed by a resazurin assay and by ATP level measurement. ATP5g3 expression was reduced by 12-fold (P = 0.03) and resazurin metabolism and ATP level were decreased to 74.4 ± 4.6% and 55.5 ± 6.9%, respectively after chronic ethanol treatment compared to control values (P < 0.01). Additionally, after OGD exposure of ethanol-treated cultures, resazurin metabolism and ATP level were decreased to 12.7 ± 1.0% and 9.0 ± 2.0% from control values (P < 0.01). These results suggest that chronic ethanol exposure reduces the cellular ATP level, possibly through a gene expression down-regulation mechanism, and increases the vulnerability to oxygen-glucose deprivation. Thus, interventions which improve metabolic function and sustain ATP-levels could attenuate ethanol-induced neuronal dysfunction and should be addressed in future studies