Do children have a theory of race?

Hirschfeld, Lawrence A.

doi:10.1016/0010-0277(95)91425-r

Cited by 312 publications

(247 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…How can the surprising competence of our socially impaired individuals with AS be explained? Hirschfeld (1995) suggested that knowledge of stereotypes is encompassed by a domain of naïve sociology that is separate to naïve psychology. In contrast to naïve psychology, which is assumed to rest on the ability to mentalize, naïve sociology is assumed to rest on the ability to reason about group membership.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An islet of social ability in Asperger Syndrome: Judging social attributes from faces

White

Hill

Winston

et al. 2006

Brain and Cognition

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We asked adults with Asperger Syndrome to judge pictorial stimuli in terms of certain social stereotypes to evaluate to what extent they have access to this type of social knowledge. Sixteen adults with Asperger Syndrome and 24 controls, matched for age and intelligence, were presented with sets of faces, bodies and objects, which had to be rated on a 7-point scale in terms of trustworthiness, attractiveness, social status, and age, or, in the case of objects, price. Despite impaired performance on two important aspects of social cognition (second-order mentalizing and face recognition) the social judgements of the individuals with Asperger Syndrome were just as competent and consistent as those of their matched controls, with only one exception: there was a trend for them to be less able to judge the attractiveness of faces if they were the same sex. We explain this difference in terms of a weakness in mentalizing, specifically the ability to take a different point of view: While all other stereotypic attributions could be made from an egocentric point of view, judging the attractiveness of faces of one's own sex requires taking the perspective of someone of the opposite sex, a challenge for people with mentalizing problems. We conclude that individuals with Asperger Syndrome show preserved aspects of social knowledge, as revealed in the attribution of stereotypes to pictures of people. These findings suggest that there are dissociable subcomponents to social cognition and that not all of these are compromised in Asperger Syndrome.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An islet of social ability in Asperger Syndrome: Judging social attributes from faces

White

Hill

Winston

et al. 2006

Brain and Cognition

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“…They were then given a booklet containing all of the test questions (with accompanying illustrations) and asked to complete the test items on their own. The test items included three measures of essentialist beliefs (SI Text), all modeled on previous work (28): explanations (four items) (28,31,32), inheritance (three items) (4,5,9,10,41), and induction (six items) (12). Identical materials were used in studies 1b and 2b, but the stories and test questions were presented verbally to children in individual research sessions.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Psychological essentialism is a pervasive cognitive bias that leads people to view members of a category as sharing a deep, underlying, inherent nature (a category "essence"), which causes them to be fundamentally similar to one another in both obvious and nonobvious ways (2,3). Numerous previous studies have documented essentialist beliefs about social categories (e.g., gender, race) from the preschool years through adulthood (4)(5)(6)(7)(8); however, to date no research has examined the processes underlying the development of these beliefs. The question of how "a belief in essence" develops was the focus of our present studies.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, essentialist beliefs about both biological and social categories have been found early in development (by age 4 y) in every cultural context studied to date, including in both rural and urban communities within the United States (4,5,7,19), among Jewish and Arab children in Israel (8,(20)(21)(22), in a small fishing community in Madagascar (6), and among children in Brazil (23). However, whereas young children show essentialist beliefs about all basic animal categories (e.g., tigers, robins, lizards), they hold essentialist beliefs about only a small subset of the social categories with which they are familiar.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Cultural transmission of social essentialism

Rhodes

Leslie

Tworek

2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

306

405

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Social essentialism entails the belief that certain social categories (e.g., gender, race) mark fundamentally distinct kinds of people. Essentialist beliefs have pernicious consequences, supporting social stereotyping and contributing to prejudice. How does social essentialism develop? In the studies reported here, we tested the hypothesis that generic language facilitates the cultural transmission of social essentialism. Two studies found that hearing generic language about a novel social category diverse for race, ethnicity, age, and sex led 4-y-olds and adults to develop essentialist beliefs about that social category. A third study documented that experimentally inducing parents to hold essentialist beliefs about a novel social category led them to produce more generic language when discussing the category with their children. Thus, generic language facilitates the transmission of essentialist beliefs about social categories from parents to children.

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“…또한 특질에 대한 실체적 관점은 고정관념, 무력감, 행동의 과잉일반화와 연결된다 (Levy & Dweck, 1999 (Hirschfeld, 1995). 뿐만 아니라 학령전기 유아도 타인의 행동적, 생 물학적 특징들을 성별 정보를 통해 추론한다 .…”

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3, 4, 5 Year-old Children's Beliefs about Trait Stability Based on Trait Type and Valence

Lee¹,

Yi²

2012

Korean Journal of Human Ecology

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This study examined young children's beliefs about trait stability based on trait type and valence. Participants included 120 children (40 three-year-olds, 40 four-year-olds, and 40 five-year olds) recruited from 3 day-care-centers and 1 kindergarten in Seoul and Kyung-Ki province. Results revealed that young children's understanding of traits differed based on trait type and valence. Children demonstrated a strong belief that social-intention traits are more stable and harder to change when compared to internal-state traits. Young children's beliefs on trait stability were also strongly influenced by trait valence. They believed that negative traits are more likely to change for the better while positive traits have greater stability and are less likely to change over time.

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Do children have a theory of race?

Cited by 312 publications

References 45 publications

An islet of social ability in Asperger Syndrome: Judging social attributes from faces

An islet of social ability in Asperger Syndrome: Judging social attributes from faces

Cultural transmission of social essentialism

3, 4, 5 Year-old Children's Beliefs about Trait Stability Based on Trait Type and Valence

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