Does identity impact essentialism? Gender essentialism in transgender, cisgender, and multiracial children

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Psychological essentialism is an early developing cognitive bias leading children to view certain categories as having an unobservable “essence” such that category members are alike in "deep" ways and qualitatively distinct from other groups (Gelman, 2004). Research shows that children essentialize social categories like gender and race (Rhodes & Mandalaywala, 2017). However, this work is largely based on children whose identities fit into essentialized gender or race categories (e.g., monoracial cisgender children), overlooking children whose identities may not fit well within essentialist boundaries (but see Fast & Olson, 2017; Gülgöz et al., 2019; Roberts & Gelman, 2017 for new work with transgender/multiracial children). In order to understand the role of experience and identity in gender essentialism, this research investigates gender essentialism in children with more essentialized identities (i.e., monoracial cisgender children) and children with less essentialized identities, including those whose identities are more or less relevant (i.e., transgender children for whom gender essentialism is relevant, multiracial cisgender children who have a different nonessentialized identity).

To explore whether transgender and multiracial children’s gender essentialist reasoning differs from monoracial cisgender children’s reasoning, we recruited 6-11 year-old monoracial cisgender (N=72), monoracial transgender (N=69), and multiracial cisgender children (N=71). Using an adapted essentialism task (Rhodes & Gelman, 2009), participants indicated whether they agreed that two children were the same kind of person. Two trials asked whether two cisgender children of the same or different gender were “the same kind of person.” Children also completed two trials that asked whether a transgender and cisgender child of the same gender identity (i.e., different assigned sex) were the same kind of person and whether a transgender and cisgender child of the same assigned sex (i.e., different gender identity) were the same kind of person.

Results showed no significant differences in essentialist reasoning between groups for any trial type (F’s < 3.02, p’s > .052, ηp2 < .03; additional analyses were collapsed across groups). Consistent with past work, children thought that two same-gender cisgender children were the same kind of person (t(208) = 15.43, p < .001, d = 1.07), while two different-gender cisgender children were different kinds of people (t(204) = 7.29, p < .001, d = 0.51). Children were at chance as to whether they thought a transgender and cisgender child of the same gender identity were the same kind of person (t(205) = 0.08, p = .94, d = 0.01), while children did not think that a transgender and cisgender child of the same assigned sex were the same kind of person (t(206) = 10.14, p < .001, d = 0.70). Overall, these results suggest that holding a nonessentialized identity does not impact children’s essentialist beliefs about gender. The results are less clear about how children think about nonessentialized identities—while children appeared to be relatively nonessentialist about assigned sex in the context of transgender children, they seemed unsure about gender identity. Though more research is needed to fully understand how children think about nonessentialized identities, gender essentialism may emerge regardless of experience.

Authors

• Jessica Glazier, University of Washington
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Abel
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth A Enright, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author

• Selin Gülgöz, Fordham University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan A Gelman, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristina R Olson, Princeton University
  Non-Presenting Author