Symbols and labels: Children's awareness of social categories in a divided society

Abstract

Aims: How and when children develop an understanding of group boundaries have implications for conflict resolution. When social divisions are not perceptually distinct, symbols become particularly important. Framed by Social Identity Development Theory, this study was designed to assess children's categorization of symbols with conflict-related group labels.Method: In Northern Ireland, 218 children (M=8.14, SD = 1.83, range 5-11 years old) participated in a novel task designed for this study. The sample was evenly split by child gender and community background.Results: Children sorted symbols above chance with both the hypothesized national (i.e., British/Irish) and ethno-political (i.e., Protestant/Catholic) labels, showing a stronger association for the former. Sorting was also stronger for ingroup symbols, compared to outgroup symbols, and increased with age.Conclusion: These findings reflect the potential role that a divided social world has on the development of children's understanding of conflict-related groups. The results also have implications for intergroup relations among children in divided societies.

Children’s understanding of ethnic group symbols: Piloting an instrument in the Republic of North Macedonia.

“…The results found that children build their repertoire of symbols of ethnic identity as they grow older, consistent with other post-accord settings (Connolly et al, 2002;Taylor, Dautel, & Rylander, 2019). For example, older children were able to correctly sort the Macedonian traditional clothing, while the younger ones were not.…”

Children’s Ethno-National Flag Categories in Three Divided Societies

“…Moreover, children integrate social information about an individual's place of birth, language, and accent to make nationality judgments (Carrington & Short, 1995;DeJesus et al, 2018;Feeney et al, 2020). Particularly in societies in which social life is defined by ethnicity or nationality (Taylor, Dautel, & Rylander, 2020a), and divided between two significant subgroups (Brewer, 1999), children must understand the features associated with national categories to successfully navigate daily life. Social Identity Development Theory (SIDT) provides a framework for investigating the development of ethno-national categories (Nesdale, 1999;2004).…”

“…In post-accord societies of NI and RNM, children categorized a range of conflict-related social and cultural group symbols (e.g. representing sports, foods, religious, geographical markers, and flags) by group labels (NI: Protestant/Catholic/British/Irish and RNM: Macedonian/Albanian; Taylor et al, 2020a;Tomovska Misoska, Taylor, Dautel & Rylander, 2020). In both societies, children were able to accurately categorize symbols related to both their ingroup and outgroup categories by the age of six, and awareness of conflict-related symbols increased with age.…”

“…Flag images were presented as part of a larger study investigating children's firstand thirdperson preferences, and categorization of, a variety of ethnic group symbols (see Taylor et al, 2020a;Tomovska Misoska et al, 2020;and Maloku, Derks, Van Laar, Ellemers, Taylor, & Dautel, under review for reports on children's categorization of and preference for ethnic symbols in each society).…”

“…Adding to the literature on children's developing awareness of ethnic and national symbols (Barrett, 2013;Connolly, 2003;Taylor et al, 2020a;Tomovska Misoska et al, 2020), flags are meaningful symbols for young children, representing abstract and largely invisible ethno-national categories. Yet, while SIDT predicts that ethnic awareness emerges first, followed by ethnic preference (Nesdale, 1999), this developmental pattern was not clear with ethno-national flags.…”