2-081 - New Directions in Social Essentialism Research

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Children essentialize certain social categories starting at a young age, believing that category membership is innate, immutable, and predictive of stereotypical properties. The goal of this symposium is to share new directions in the study of social essentialism in children, with a focus on the development and consequences of social essentialism for groups and properties not traditionally studied. In the first talk, the authors discuss how learning about transgender identities might lead to lower levels of gender essentialism in children. The second talk shows how having a transgender identity, as well as being exposed to transgender individuals, might differentially influence children’s essentialism of one’s gender assigned at birth versus one’s gender identity. In the third talk, authors examine children’s essentialist beliefs about native versus immigrant accents, and show that children view accent as marking different kinds of people. Thus, the first three talks discuss the extent to which children essentialize social category distinctions that implicitly map onto societally decreed status differences. In the fourth talk, the authors explore children’s essentialist beliefs about social status directly, when reasoning about novel social groups. Together, the research presented in this symposium contribute to our understanding of children’s burgeoning essentialist beliefs about social categories and social structures that are at the forefront of the current cultural milieu, and which are relevant to our understanding of perceptions of and attitudes toward underrepresented and stigmatized groups.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Selin Gülgöz, University of Washington

Individual Presentations

• Transformative Tales: How Children’s Books Can Affect Children’s Understanding of Trans Identities and Gender Essentialist Beliefs - Presenting Author: Rachel D Fine, University of Michigan; Non-Presenting Author: Susan Gelman, University of Michigan

• Gender Essentialism in Transgender and Cisgender Children - Presenting Author: Selin Gülgöz, University of Washington; Non-Presenting Author: Susan Gelman, University of Michigan; Non-Presenting Author: Kristina Olson, University of Washington

• Examining Children’s Essentialist Beliefs about Foreign-Accented Individuals - Presenting Author: Christine Tai, University of Hawaii; Non-Presenting Author: Yiyuan Xu, University of Hawaii at Manoa; Non-Presenting Author: Kristin Pauker, University of Hawaii

• Do Children View Social Status in Essentialist Terms? - Presenting Author: Tara Mandalaywala, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Non-Presenting Author: Ryan Lei, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Josie Benitez, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Sarah-Jane Leslie, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Marjorie Rhodes, New York University