Guess who’s coming to dinner: an experimental investigation on primary and secondary school pupils’ social attitudes

This paper describes the attitudes of pupils ranging from late childhood to adolescence towards diversity expressed as disability, other gender and race in a context of full inclusion. For the study, two experiments were carried out asking a large sample (i.e. 764 + 160) of participants to choose a hypothetical classmate to share a series of different activities with. The hypothetical classmate could be chosen between: same gender pupil; other gender pupil; same gender pupil of the prototypical racial minority; same gender pupil using a wheelchair. In turn, activities included: an outdoor, highly motor demanding, game; an indoor board game; a purely social activity; a scholastic activity; and a gesture of solidarity and good-will. Results clearly demonstrate that pupils’ decisions are strongly modulated by the activity itself rather than by ethnic factors. Pupils aged 9–14 appear to have developed a finely tuned sense of ‘what works in which situations’. Accordingly, while a visible disability turns out to be very effective in gaining sympathy and eliciting pity, it results in a serious obstacle for the development of a close friendship between peers.