The Development of Children’s Sociomoral Expectations of Social Groups Versus Social Categories

• In Event: 1-034 - How Do Social Groups Guide Children’s Sociomoral Reasoning?

Integrative Statement

Previous work suggests that adults distinguish between social groups (cohesive, small collectives that often share common goals or outcomes) and social categories (large, less cohesive collectives that are stable over time; e.g., Lickel et al., 2000). These distinctions are important because they shape sociomoral expectations. For example, people often expect members of a team (a social group) to be more supportive and loyal to one another than they do members of a gender (a social category) (e.g., Carnes et al., 2015). Yet little is known about the developmental origins of the group-vs.-category distinction. The present research thus seeks to examine whether young children’s sociomoral expectations distinguish between social groups and social categories and whether their ability to make this distinction changes with age.
To investigate this question, we assessed children’s expectations about third-party interactions that involved sociomorally-relevant behaviors such as helping or hurting. On each trial, participants (N = 128; Mage = 6.02, SD = 1.10; 52% girls) saw two children who belonged to (1) the same category (specifically, gender) but different groups (specifically, teams), or (2) the same group (specifically, team) but different categories (specifically, genders), or (3) the same category and group (as a control) (see Figure 1). One of these protagonists was said to perform a positive (e.g., helping) or negative (e.g., stealing) behavior. Children then had to guess whether this behavior was directed toward the other same-category/same-group/same-both protagonist (depending on the trial), or toward another person. This other person was represented by a question mark and labeled as “someone else.” Once children made a guess, they were asked if they were “sort of sure” or “really sure.” These responses were converted to a scale from -1.5 to 1.5, with higher scores indicating stronger expectations of support among same-group/same-category/same-both members. There were four trials of each type (same-category, same-group, same-both), for a total of 12 trials. The four trials of each type were blocked. The order of the same-category and same-group blocks was counterbalanced, and the same-both block was always last.
Results revealed a significant interaction between condition and age (see Figure 2),  = .009, SE = .0036, p = .009. Young children expected support behaviors among members of the same social category and social group, but older children were less likely to use social category information as a basis for expectations of support or helping. A second study (N = 15 so far) is underway to examine whether these conclusions hold across a broader range of groups and categories.
To summarize, we found that young children seem to have an undifferentiated concept of social groups and categories, such that both types of relationships seem to license expectations of preferential helping and obligations to protect from harm. However, as children get older, they begin to distinguish between social groups and social categories in a way that is more consistent with adults. We discuss the implications of these results for children’s understanding of social collectives and how this may inform group-based phenomena observed in adults.

Authors

• Ryan Lei, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author