The Effects of Minimal Group Membership on Young Preschoolers’ Social Preferences, Estimates of Similarity, and Behavioral Attribution

Richter, Nadja; Over, Harriet; Dunham, Yarrow

doi:10.1525/collabra.44

Cited by 49 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(48 reference statements)

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“…Preferring “minimal” ingroup members begins early in childhood. In both classic experiments, like the Robber’s Cave [122], and more modern research [44, 123–125], children prefer other people who are in their randomly assigned group.…”

Section: The Relationship Between Social Preferences and Social Categmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Origins of Social Categorization

Liberman

Woodward

Kinzler

2017

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

211

156

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Forming conceptually rich social categories helps people navigate the complex social world by allowing them to reason about others’ likely thoughts, beliefs, actions, and interactions as guided by group membership. Yet, social categorization often has nefarious consequences. We suggest that the foundation of the human ability to form useful social categories is in place in infancy: social categories guide infants’ inferences about peoples’ shared characteristics and social relationships. We also suggest that the ability to form abstract social categories may be separable from the eventual negative downstream consequences of social categorization, including prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping. Whereas a tendency to form inductively rich social categories appears early in ontogeny, prejudice based on each particular category dimension may not be inevitable.

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Section: The Relationship Between Social Preferences and Social Categmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Origins of Social Categorization

Liberman

Woodward

Kinzler

2017

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

211

156

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Second, when given evidence that individuals belong to the same group, children as young as 3 y of age show some expectation of ingroup support (11,32,38,39). In experiments by Rhodes (11), for example, children ages 3-10 y were introduced to two minimal groups of people identified by novel labels: "flurps" and "zazzes."…”

Section: Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infants possess an abstract expectation of ingroup support

Jin

Baillargeon

2017

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

190

102

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One pervasive facet of human interactions is the tendency to favor ingroups over outgroups. Remarkably, this tendency has been observed even when individuals are assigned to minimal groups based on arbitrary markers. Why is mere categorization into a minimal group sufficient to elicit some degree of ingroup favoritism? We consider several accounts that have been proposed in answer to this question and then test one particular account, which holds that ingroup favoritism reflects in part an abstract and early-emerging sociomoral expectation of ingroup support. In violation-of-expectation experiments with 17-mo-old infants, unfamiliar women were first identified (using novel labels) as belonging to the same group, to different groups, or to unspecified groups. Next, one woman needed instrumental assistance to achieve her goal, and another woman either provided the necessary assistance (help event) or chose not to do so (ignore event). When the two women belonged to the same group, infants looked significantly longer if shown the ignore as opposed to the help event; when the two women belonged to different groups or to unspecified groups, however, infants looked equally at the two events. Together, these results indicate that infants view helping as expected among individuals from the same group, but as optional otherwise. As such, the results demonstrate that from an early age, an abstract expectation of ingroup support contributes to ingroup favoritism in human interactions.infant cognition | sociomoral reasoning | ingroup support | ingroup favoritism | minimal groups

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“…For example, infants prefer to look at, and accept toys from, people who speak their native language over people who speak a foreign language (Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007). From at least the age of 5, and probably as young as 3, children prefer members of their own group even when those groups are 'minimal', that is, based on arbitrary, experimentercreated distinctions such as shirt colour (Bigler, Jones, & Lobliner, 1997;Dunham, Baron, & Carey, 2011;Richter, Over, & Dunham, 2016). Cultural transmission also appears to play a role in determining children's attitudes towards real-world groups (Allport, 1954;Devine, 1989).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%