The Development of Intersectional Social Prototypes

Abstract

Race and gender information overlap to shape adults’ representations of social categories. This overlap can lead to the “psychological invisibility” of people whose race and gender identities are perceived to have conflicting stereotypes. The present research examines whether and when race begins to bias representations of gender across development. Using a speeded categorization task, Study 1 revealed that children were slower to categorize Black women as women, relative to White and Asian women as women and Black men as men. Children were also more likely to mis-categorize Black women as men and less likely to stereotype Black women as feminine. Study 2 replicated these findings and provided evidence of a developmental shift in categorization speed. An omnibus analysis provided a high-powered test of developmental hypotheses, revealing that target race began biasing children’s gender categorization around age 5. Implications for the development of social category representation are discussed.

Children's use of race and gender as cues to social status

“…Finally, our goal across these two studies was to examine children's status beliefs about gender and race separately (e.g., choosing Latinx stimuli for the gender condition, as children's beliefs about status for Latinx social categories appear later in development: [62]). However, in the real-world there are important intersectional processes that affect the content of individual's beliefs and attitudes [62,63]. For example, children as young as 5-years-old are less likely to view Black women (as compared to White women) as feminine [63].…”

“…However, in the real-world there are important intersectional processes that affect the content of individual's beliefs and attitudes [62,63]. For example, children as young as 5-years-old are less likely to view Black women (as compared to White women) as feminine [63]. Determining whether the content of children's status beliefs are affected in a similarly intersectional process will be an important area for subsequent research.…”

Perceiving gender while perceiving language: Integrating psycholinguistics and gender theory

“…Johnson et al (2012) asked participants to categorize faces according to sex, and found that this categorization was facilitated when the matching sex category shared social stereotypes with the race, and impaired when stereotypes about the race and sex category were in conflict. Lei et al (2020) examined this effect in children, concluding that race begins biasing participant judgments of gender around 5 years of age. These effects demonstrate that in mature language users, race and gender are neither perceived independently, nor as distinct hierarchies.…”

Perceived Prototypicality of Asian Subgroups in the United States and the United Kingdom

“…Finally, we theorized that social prototypes are informed by history but we did not examine how history steeps into our mental representations. Children are able to develop complex intersectional prototypes as early as 5 years old (Lei et al, 2020). Our understanding of racial groups is learned early because race and racism are infused within the structure of society (Ray, 2019;Salter et al, 2018).…”

“…. For instance, women vary considerably in race, physical features, and psychological traits, but some women (e.g., White women, stereotypically feminine women) are seen as more prototypical and representative of the female gender group than others (e.g., Black women, masculine women) in most Western societies (Goh et al, 2021;Lei et al, 2020;Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008;Thomas et al, 2014). Those that deviate from the prototypical image of their social groups are often disliked, forgotten, punished, or discredited (Goh et al, 2021;Phelan & Rudman, 2010;Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008;Schug et al, 2017;Sesko & Biernat, 2010;Vogel et al, 2021).…”