Young Children's Preferences: Gender, Race, and Social Status

Shutts, Kristin

doi:10.1111/cdep.12154

Cited by 93 publications

(92 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Aslin, 2007). However, these results should not be taken to indicate true social preferences, prejudice, or stereotyping, as these would presumably require direct knowledge of group characteristics (Shutts, 2015). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infant attention to same- and other-race faces

et al. 2017

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We recorded visual attention to same- and other-race faces in Hispanic and White 11-month-old infants, an age at which face processing is presumably biased by an own-race recognition advantage. Infants viewed pairs of faces differing in race or ethnicity as their eye movements were recorded. We discovered consistently greater attention to Black over Hispanic faces, to Black faces over White faces, and to Hispanic over White faces. Inversion of face stimuli, and infant ethnicity, had little effect on performance. Infants’ social environments, however, differed sharply according to ethnicity: Hispanic infants are almost exclusively exposed to Hispanic family members, and White infants to White family members. Moreover, Hispanic infants inhabit communities that are more racially and ethnically diverse. These results imply that race-based visual attention in infancy is closely aligned with the larger society’s racial and ethnic composition, as opposed to race-based recognition, which is more closely aligned with infants’ immediate social environments.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infant attention to same- and other-race faces

et al. 2017

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“…Typical development is indeed replete with relevant, more generalizable, and primordial facts compared with those used by Whitehouse in his extreme account. Developmental research tends to show that the first signs of identity fusion and the explicit sense of oneness with the group begins to become evident during preschool years (3-5 years), with the emergence of gender and racial biases and minimal group affiliation, including the early detection of and preference for higher economic status, as well as first evidence of strong and strategic conformity, from both a first-person and a third-person perspective (Cordonier et al 2017;Haun & Tomasello 2011;Nesdale 2008;Nesdale et al 2005;Shutts 2015;Shutts et al 2016). Resonating with Whitehouse's model of extreme self-sacrifice, children's early signs of identity fusion are compounded by an early propensity toward essentialism (Gelman 2003).…”

Section: Origins Of Social Fusion Philippe Rochatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dying for the group: Towards a general theory of extreme self-sacrifice

Whitehouse¹

2018

Behav Brain Sci

154

166

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Whether upheld as heroic or reviled as terrorism, throughout history people have been willing to lay down their lives for the sake of their groups. Why? Previous theories of extreme self-sacrifice have highlighted a range of seemingly disparate factors such as collective identity, outgroup hostility, and kin psychology. This paper attempts to integrate many of these factors into a single overarching theory based on several decades of collaborative research with a range of special populations, from tribes in Papua New Guinea to Libyan insurgents, and from Muslim fundamentalists in Indonesia to Brazilian football hooligans. These studies suggest that extreme self-sacrifice is motivated by 'identity fusion', a visceral sense of oneness with the group resulting from intense collective experiences (e.g. painful rituals or the horrors of frontline combat) or from perceptions of shared biology. In ancient foraging societies, fusion would have enabled warlike bands to stand united despite strong temptations to scatter and flee. The fusion mechanism has often been exploited in cultural rituals, not only by tribal societies but also in specialized cells embedded in armies, cults, and terrorist organizations. With the rise of social complexity and the spread of states and empires, fusion has also been extended to much larger groups, including doctrinal religions, ethnicities, and ideological movements. Explaining extreme self-sacrifice is not only a scientific priority but also a practical challenge as we seek a collective response to suicide terrorism and other extreme expressions of outgroup hostility that continue to bedevil humanity today.

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“…The second goal of this research was to examine the implications of beliefs about both the heritability and causal essence of race for racial attitudes in early childhood, and particularly the extent to which such implications might vary depending on children's own experiences as members of certain groups. To test these relations in early childhood, as negative racial attitudes begin to emerge (e.g., Clark & Clark, ; Raabe & Beelman, ; Shutts, ), children ages 5–6 years old were included in this study. We compare the responses of children in this age group to those of adults, for whom the effects of essentialism on prejudice have been previously examined (e.g., Jayaratne et al., ; Mandalaywala et al., ; Williams & Eberhardt, ).…”

Section: Measurement Of Essentialist Beliefs In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Nature and Consequences of Essentialist Beliefs About Race in Early Childhood

et al. 2018

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It is widely believed that race divides the world into biologically distinct kinds of people-an essentialist belief inconsistent with reality. Essentialist views of race have been described as early emerging, but this study found that young children (n = 203, M = 5.45) hold only the more limited belief that the physical feature of skin color is inherited and stable. Overall, children rejected the causal essentialist view that behavioral and psychological characteristics are constrained by an inherited racial essence. Although average levels of children's causal essentialist beliefs about race were low, variation in these beliefs was related to children's own group membership, exposure to diversity, as well as children's own social attitudes.

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Young Children's Preferences: Gender, Race, and Social Status

Cited by 93 publications

References 43 publications

Infant attention to same- and other-race faces

Infant attention to same- and other-race faces

Dying for the group: Towards a general theory of extreme self-sacrifice

The Nature and Consequences of Essentialist Beliefs About Race in Early Childhood

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