How race and gender shape the development of social prototypes in the United States

Abstract

The present studies examined how gender and race information shape children’s prototypes of various social categories. Children (N=543; Mage=5.81, range=2.75 - 10.62; 281 girls, 262 boys; 193 White, 114 Asian, 71 Black, 50 Hispanic, 39 Multiracial, 7 Middle-Eastern, 69 race unreported) most often chose White people as prototypical of boys and men—a pattern that increased with age. For female gender categories, children most often selected a White girl as prototypical of girls, but an Asian woman as prototypical of women. For superordinate social categories (person and kid), children tended to choose members of their own gender as most representative. Overall, the findings reveal how cultural ideologies and identity-based processes interact to shape the development of social prototypes across childhood.

Positioning Asian Americans in Social Cognition

“…For example, while children marginalize Black women from their representations of a female gender group, they do not do the same to White or Asian women (Lei et al, 2020;Leshin et al, 2021). Moreover, (predominantly White) children are more likely to pick Asian women as the most typical representation of women and Black women as the least representative of women (Lei et al, 2022). These findings suggest an alternative possibility for how children learn about the social world.…”

Stereotypes as prototypes in children's gender concepts

“…One limitation of the current work is that we chose to present gender categories as exemplified by White children, based on evidence that gender stereotypes are biased towards White boys and girls beginning in childhood (Lei et al, 2021). However, actual people children encounter in daily life hold membership in multiple social categories simultaneously, leaving open the question of how gender stereotypes shape children's intersectional social prototypes.…”

“…They saw five glasses with different amounts of water, and they clicked on the glass containing the least, most, and middle amounts. Then, half of participants were randomly assigned to make explicit judgments about which category member was most representative, by picking one to put in a book to teach an alien about the category (representative condition; Foster-Hanson & Rhodes, 2019; Lei et al, 2021;Rhodes et al, 2008). The other half were randomly assigned to make explicit judgments about which category member should get a prize for being the "best" of its kind, as a measure of stereotype endorsement (best condition; Foster-Hanson & Rhodes, 2019).…”

Objects of inquiry: Examining the origins of gender-based objectification

“…Furthermore, children understand that the human mind contains many different dimensions and carve up mental capacities into the same three categories as adults: socio-emotional (e.g., related to feelings), physiological (e.g., related to biological functions), and perceptual-cognitive (i.e., related to cognitive abilities; Weisman et al, 2017;. Additionally, children-and, in particular, boys-begin to think of men more than women as prototypical of the category person in middle childhood (Lei et al, 2022). Thus, across a wide array of measures, group-based biases shape how children reason about humanness and personhood; however, when this reasoning begins to encompass objectification (i.e., entail the addition of object-like associations, rather than merely the denial of human-like ones; Loughnan et al, 2010) has not yet been examined and is thus ripe for investigation.…”