Seeing isn't believing: The effect of intergroup exposure on children's essentialist beliefs about ethnic categories.

Deeb, Inas; Segall, Gili; Birnbaum, Dana W.; Ben-Eliyahu, Adar; Diesendruck, Gil

doi:10.1037/a0026107

Cited by 80 publications

(108 citation statements)

References 82 publications

(186 reference statements)

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“…To determine whether this mechanism accounts for crosscultural variation in social essentialism, future work will need to test whether the effects obtained in the populations studied here (which consisted primarily of educated middle-class families in a diverse, urban environment) extend to other cultural communities. Certainly other cultural factors-for example, the degree to which a category serves as the basis of segregation or differential treatment (20,22,37)-could also play roles in shaping the development of social essentialism.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

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.

283

387

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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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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural transmission of social essentialism

Rhodes

Leslie

Tworek

2012

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

283

387

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“…Furthermore, the period from 6-11 years is a time previously shown to be associated with important change in children's beliefs and reasoning about social categories (e.g. see Deeb et al, 2011;Taylor, Rhodes & Gelman, 2009). …”

Section: The Current Study: Religion Categories In Northern Irelandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of essentialist thinking about religion categories in Northern Ireland (and the United States).

Smyth¹,

Feeney²,

Eidson³

et al. 2017

Developmental Psychology

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Social essentialism, the belief that members of certain social categories share unobservable properties, licenses expectations that those categories are natural and a good basis for inference.A challenge for cognitive developmental theory is to give an account of how children come to develop essentialist beliefs about socially important categories. Previous evidence from Israel suggests that kindergarteners selectively engage in essentialist reasoning about culturally salient (ethnicity) categories, and that this is attenuated among children in integrated schools. In five studies (N=718) we used forced-choice (Study 1) and unconstrained (Studies 2-4) categorybased inference tasks, and a questionnaire (Study 5) to study the development of essentialist reasoning about religion categories in Northern Ireland (Studies 1-3 & 5) and the US (Study 4).Results show that, as in Israel, Northern Irish children selectively engage in essentialist reasoning about culturally salient (religion) categories, and that such reasoning is attenuated among children in integrated schools. However, the development trajectory of essentialist thinking and the patterns of attenuation among children attending integrated schools in Northern Ireland differ from the Israeli case. Meta-analysis confirmed this claim and ruled out an alternative explanation of the results based on community diversity. Although the Northern Irish and Israeli case studies illustrate that children develop selective essentialist beliefs about socially important categories, and that these beliefs are impacted by educational context, the differences between them emphasize the importance of historical, cultural, and political context in understanding conceptual development, and suggest that there may be more than one developmental route to social essentialism. Development of essentialist thinking about religion categories in Northern Ireland (and the United States)Psychological essentialism is the belief that natural categories contain an underlying essence that conveys category membership and causes category members to share both observable and hidden properties (Gelman, 2003;Medin & Ortony, 1989). In some cases, essentialist thinking can be useful. For example, using "essentialized" categories for inference provides us with an important tool to reduce the complexity of incoming information to manageable levels, and allows us to organize what we know and make inferences about what we don't know. However, essentialist thinking can also be harmful and lead to overgeneralization or unwarranted assumptions of homogeneity, especially when essentialist thinking is applied to social categories (e.g. Diesendruck, 2013;Leslie, Cimpian, Meyer & Freeland, 2015). In this paper we examine the development of essentialist thinking about socially important religion categoriesCatholic and Protestant-in Northern Ireland, with particular attention toward how school and national context may contribute to differences in the use of social categories to guide inferences.Essentialist...

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“…Moreover, by kindergarten-age, children hold rich concepts and biased attitudes regarding social groups (e.g., Deeb, Segall, Birnbaum, Ben-Eliyahu, & Diesendruck, 2011;Dunham, Baron, & Carey, 2011). Clearly, then, the capacity to regard the preferences of individuals, and those of a group, is available already prior to school entry.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%