Developmental Shifts in a Preference to Learn About Social Categories Versus Individual Category Members

• In Event: 3-079 - Boundaries for the biases in reasoning about categories

Integrative Statement

People crave information about categories (see Cimpian, 2016). In fact, when given the explicit choice, children ages 4 to 8 will choose to learn about an animal category over an individual category member (Park & Cimpian, 2014; Sutherland & Rule, 2017). Although this interest supports efficient learning, it can also encourage one to overlook important differences between category members. For example, category-level information might promote the assumption that a woman wants to have a child, or that a black person is dangerous. Thus, it is vital to understand how the general interest in learning category information applies to social categories (e.g., women, Black people).

In Experiment 1, children (ages 5 to 12; N = 160) and adults (N = 40) chose between hearing a fact about a fictional social category (e.g., Chargians) or an individual member of the category (e.g., “this Chargian in the picture”). Children could choose verbally or by pointing to one of two identical cards with non-visible pictures on the back corresponding to the fact they chose. Children only saw the pictures and heard their chosen facts at the end of the task. They made eight consecutive choices, each with a different fictional social category and individual. This was the same paradigm as in previous work that demonstrated children’s preference to learn about animal categories (Sutherland & Rule, 2017)—we simply changed the words animals and animal to people and person. Adults completed the study on a computer with images of the cards that the children saw.

We analysed participants’ tendency to choose the category instead of the individual using a binomial mixed-model regression with subject and category name as random variables. The older participants were, the more likely they were to choose to learn about the social category (b = 0.06, SE = 0.01, p < .001). Children ages 5 to 8 did not show a preference (b = 0.01, SE = 0.09, p = .944), children ages 9 to 12 showed a preference to learn about the category (b = 0.24, SE = 0.08, p = .003), and adults showed an even stronger preference for category information (b = 1.06, SE = 0.25, p < .001).

In Experiments 2-4 (N = 200), we tested whether the null result for the younger children arose from equal interest in categories and individuals by ruling out possible alternative explanations. Children ages 5 to 8 continued to choose the category and individual equally: (1) when given information about the types of facts they might learn, (2) when the categories were said to have different skin colors (a salient category distinction for children), and (3) when the individual option was made to seem more like an individual than merely a representative of the category (bs ≤ 0.01, ps ≤ .52).

Our findings suggest that a preference to learn about social categories develops late, bearing strong implications for understanding the development of stereotype formation and use.

Authors

• Shelbie Sutherland, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Nicholas Rule, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author