Normative Social Role Concepts in Early Childhood

Abstract

The current studies (N = 255, children ages 4–5 and adults) explore patterns of age‐related continuity and change in conceptual representations of social role categories (e.g., “scientist”). In Study 1, young children's judgments of category membership were shaped by both category labels and category‐normative traits, and the two were dissociable, indicating that even young children's conceptual representations for some social categories have a “dual character.” In Study 2, when labels and traits were contrasted, adults and children based their category‐based induction decisions on category‐normative traits rather than labels. Study 3 confirmed that children reason based on category‐normative traits because they view them as an obligatory part of category membership. In contrast, adults in this study viewed the category‐normative traits as informative on their own (not only as a cue to obligations). Implications for continuity and change in representations of social role categories will be discussed.

Value-based Essentialism: Essentialist Beliefs About Social Groups With Shared Values

“…This same basic structure can be found in a variety of other concepts (e.g., the concepts of love, friendship, art), and within the philosophical literature, there has been a flurry of recent work on concepts like these (Del Pinal & Reuter, 2017;Knobe et al, 2013;Leslie, 2015;Liao et al, in press;Reuter, 2018; for work in developmental psychology, see Foster-Hanson & Rhodes, 2019). At this point, there is still disagreement about precisely how these concepts should be understood, but one hypothesis is that value-based concepts like these might involve a form of essentialism (Newman & Knobe, 2019).…”

Developmental changes in strategies for gathering evidence about biological kinds

“…There are several reasons why younger children might show a heightened focus on category ideals and view diversity information as less valuable. For example, young children DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGE IN SAMPLING STRATEGIES 23 often conflate descriptive and prescriptive information Rakoczy & Schmidt, 2013;Roberts, Gelman, & Ho, 2017;Shtulman & Phillips, 2018) and prioritize prescriptive norms over other information (Foster-Hanson & Rhodes, 2019b;Kalish & Lawson, 2008;Kalish & Shiverick, 2004). Young children also readily think teleologically about biological kinds, viewing variation as progression towards a functional adaptive ideal (Emmons & Kelemen, 2015;Kelemen, 1999;Kelemen, Callanan, Casler, & Pérez-Granados, 2005;Shtulman & Schulz, 2008).…”

Should Individuals Think Like Their Group? A Descriptive‐to‐Prescriptive Tendency Toward Group‐Based Beliefs

“…This might especially be the case for opinions, for which there are no clear right or wrong ways of thinking. This possibility is further supported by research suggesting that children often interpret group-based opinions as normative and central to group membership (Foster-Hanson & Rhodes, 2019;Knobe, Prasada, & Newman, 2013;Rhodes & Chalik, 2013). However, research on epistemic cognition suggests that even young preschool-aged children understand that opinions are subjective internal states that vary across individuals as matters of personal preference (Heiphetz et al, 2014;Kalish, 2012;Nucci, 1981Nucci, , 2014.…”

“…Indeed, children, especially younger children (ages 4-6), disapproved of non-conformity (e.g., they disapproved of a Hibble who ate the kind of food more typical of Glerks) and they justified their disapproval prescriptively (e.g., "Hibbles are not supposed to eat that"). Simply put, once children learned that a group was a certain way, they inferred that individuals within that group should be that way (see also Bear & Knobe, 2017;Foster-Hanson & Rhodes, 2019;Kalish, 2012;Tworek & Cimpian, 2016). Subsequent papers report that this descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency is easy to elicit (e.g., via category labels and generic statements), replicates (and varies) cross-culturally (e.g., stronger among preschoolers and adults recruited in relatively collectivistic contexts compared to relatively individualistic contexts), varies under situational constraints (e.g., stronger when children are encouraged to reflect upon the non-conformity), and even influences what children (and adults) think is socially and morally permissible (e.g., they evaluated someone who punched people, unlike their group, as worse than someone who did the same thing, like their group; Roberts, Guo, Ho, & Gelman, 2018;Roberts & Horii, 2019).…”