Melanie Killen is a developmental psychologist and Professor of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, and Professor of Psychology (Affiliate) at the University of Maryland, and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. She is supported by funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her research. In 2008, she was awarded Distinguished Scholar-Teacher by the Provost's office at the University of Maryland. She is the Director of the Social and Moral Development Lab at the University of Maryland.
Education
Killen obtained her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a NIMH Predoctoral trainee. Her PhD advisor was Elliot Turiel. She received her B.A. in Psychology from Clark University, where she was awarded a New England Psychological Association undergraduate Honorary Fellow.
Research
Killen, along with Adam Rutland, developed the Social Reasoning Developmental (SRD) model which identifies three factors, morality, group identity, and psychological knowledge, that bear on how individuals make social decisions, evaluate intergroup contexts, and display social biases when judging acts to be right or wrong. Morality includes fairness, equality, and rights; group identity includes group dynamics, in-group preferences and outgroup distrust, group advantaged and disadvantaged status, and group functioning; psychological knowledge includes attributions of intentions and mental state knowledge.
Killen has received funding from the NSF and the NICHD for a randomized control trial (RCT) of a program developed by her team designed to reduce prejudice and bias and promote positive intergroup friendships in childhood. The program is called Developing Inclusive Youth (DIY) and has a teaching component called Teaching Inclusive Youth (TIY). The long term goal is to implement the program in school districts interested in addressing prejudice and bias in childhood.
In 2011-2012, Killen and her research team were commissioned by Anderson Cooper at CNN AC360 to conduct a study on children's racial biases which aired in April 2012, and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding News and Analysis, October 1, 2013.
Killen serves on the brain trust initiative in the education unit for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), Association for Psychological Science (APS), and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI).
Books
Killen, M., & Smetana, J.G. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of moral development, 2nd edition. NY: Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis Group. Killen, M., & Rutland, A. (2011). Children and social exclusion: Morality, prejudice, and group identity. New York: Wiley/Blackwell Publishers. Killen, M., & Coplan, R. J. (2011). Social development in childhood and adolescence: A contemporary reader. NY: Wiley/Blackwell Publishers. Killen, M., & Smetana, J.G. (Eds.) (2006). Handbook of moral development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (Translated into Chinese and Korean). Levy, S.R., & Killen, M. (Eds.). (2008). Intergroup attitudes and relations in childhood through adulthood. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Honorable Mention, Otto Klineberg Intercultural and International Relations Prize, from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) Killen, M., Lee-Kim, J., McGlothlin, H., & Stangor, C. (2002). How children and adolescents evaluate gender and racial exclusion. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. Serial No. 271, Vol. 67, No. 4. Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers. Langer, J., & Killen, M. (Eds.). (1998). Piaget, evolution, and development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Killen, M., & Hart, D. (Eds.) (1995). Morality in everyday life: Developmental perspectives. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Winner, Outstanding Book Award for 1997, from Moral Development and Education Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA)