Categories Influence Predictions About Individual Consistency

Abstract

Predicting how people will behave in the future is a critical social-cognitive task. In four studies (N 5 150, ages preschool to adult), young children (ages 4 -5) used category information to guide their expectations about individual consistency. They predicted that psychological properties (preferences and fears) would remain consistent over time after hearing one example in which properties followed a category-linked distribution (e.g., children of different genders had different properties) but not when properties varied within a category (e.g., children of the same gender had different properties). The developmental course of these findings is examined. Results suggest the importance of considering how children's emerging theories of behavior and of social groups operate together to inform their expectations about the social world.

Names will never hurt me? Naming and the development of racial and gender categories in preschool‐aged children

“…This possibility, hinted at in children's performance in the No Word conditions of Experiments 2 and 3, fits well with recent evidence suggesting that in preschool-aged children, social preferences are guided by gender (and age) but not by race (Rhodes & Gelman, 2008;Shutts, Banaji, & Spelke, 2009). For example, Rhodes and Gelman (2008) documented that although preschool-aged children construed gender as a natural kind, it was not until roughly 10 years of age that they treated race in this way. Why might this be the case?…”

“…This is a worthy topic because to the best of our knowledge, there is a universal belief that people can be partitioned into distinct kinds, on the basis of presumed racial or gender differences, and because these presumed kinds guide our expectations of the capacities, intentions, and behaviors of individuals (Aboud, 1988;Banaji, 2002;Bodenhausen et al, 2007;Diesendruck & haLevi, 2006;Gelman, 2003;Hirschfeld, 1995;Katz, 1983;Rhodes & Gelman, 2008;Signorella et al, 1993;Taylor et al, 2009). Consider, for example, a young child learning that some property (e.g., is generous; is mean to animals) is true of a particular individual.…”

“…On the one hand, there is some evidence suggesting that children can use gender as an inductive base (Gelman, Collman, & Maccoby, 1986;Taylor & Gelman, 1993;Rhodes & Gelman, 2008) for inferring unfamiliar properties. However, there is also a considerable developmental evidence revealing that children often override surface similarities (e.g., similarity in physical appearance) when making inductive inferences about people.…”

“…More recent work reveals that 5-year-old children also use social category names (e.g., ''girl'' vs. ''boy'' or ''Arab'' vs. ''Israeli''), rather than surface perceptual resemblances, to guide their inferences about novel properties (e.g., playing jimjam or tibbits) to people (Diesendruck & haLevi, 2006). Furthermore, 4-to 5-year-old children's inferences about internal properties are more stable if those properties have been linked to a named social category Rhodes & Gelman, 2008).…”

The Influence of Competition on Children's Social Categories

“…For example, preschool-aged children view gender categories as defined by the presence of intrinsic biological properties that are determined by birth (Taylor, 1996;Taylor, Rhodes, & Gelman, 2009). Yet, they view gender as informative for making predictions not only about biological properties (Gelman, Collman, & Maccoby, 1986), but about a range of social properties as well (e.g., preferences, skills, and traits; Berndt & Heller, 1986;Biernat, 1991;Rhodes & Gelman, 2008;Shutts, Banaji, & Spelke, 2010;Taylor et al, 2009). In contrast, children view categories based on personality characteristics (e.g., friendly people and shy people) as less informative for making inferences about unknown properties (e.g., Diesendruck & haLevi, 2006).…”