Priorities in social categories

Abstract

In this paper we review evidence from social, developmental, and evolutionary psychology to raise a common question: Are there priorities in how humans categorize their social world? Are some social groupings more prominent in childhood, and more resilient in adulthood than others? We review and compare evidence from each field, with a particular emphasis on exploring the relative robustness of gender, race, age, and language as social categories. We highlight the value of developmental approaches for characterizing the origins and nature of social categories in adults, and provide suggestions for how collaborative research from social, developmental, and evolutionary psychology could inform our understanding of potential priorities in social categorization. Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Social cognition is characterized not only by our thinking about individuals, but also by our thinking about groups of individuals. Psychologists from multiple subfields have investigated how we detect, represent, and reason about social categories, or distinctions that connote social group membership. In this paper we draw on evidence from social, developmental, and evolutionary psychology to raise a common question: Do some social distinctions carry more weight than others in guiding our divisions of the social world? Put more simply, are some social categories more important to us than others? Developmental, social, and evolutionary psychologists have addressed this question, though often with different tools and methodologies, and sometimes resulting in divergent conclusions. Here we review key literature from each field, with a particular emphasis on illustrating the value of developmental approaches to characterizing the origins and nature of social categories in adults. Finally, we provide examples of how synergistic research in developmental, social, and evolutionary psychology can shed light on potential priorities in social categorization. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGYSocial psychologists have long investigated mechanisms of social categorization and social group-based preferences. Notable in this tradition of research is the finding that the variables used to create group distinctions are remarkably flexible. Beginning with the research of Tajfel, countless studies have shown that almost any group division-regardless of how seemingly arbitrary-can foster relative preferences for novel ingroup over outgroup members. ''Minimal group'' divisions can be based on completely arbitrary grouping assignments, such as the random assignment of individuals to

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

“…One interpretation is that the infants' responses were driven mainly by familiarity: Specifically, the infants preferred the woman whose language was familiar and, by association, the food or toy in her possession (e.g., Dunham, Baron, & Banaji, 2008;Kinzler, Shutts, & Correll, 2010).…”

Children's social identities

“…Infants also show preferences for faces of peers over those of adults (Bahrick, Netto, & Hernandez-Reif, 1998;Sanefuji, Ohgami, & Hashiya, 2006), indicating that age too is important as a basis for categorization. Recently, Kinzler, Shutts and Correll (2010) have found that a fourth form of categorization is apparent in infancy: native-language speakers versus foreign-language speakers. Although we have known for some time of newborns' preference for their mother tongue over other languages (Mehler et al, 1988;Nazzi, Bertoncini, & Mehler, 1998), recent work has revealed that pre-verbal infants even prefer to interact with and accept toys from speakers of their native language (Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007;Shutts, Kinzler, McKee, & Spelke, 2009).…”

In the eyes of the beholder: National identification predicts differential reactions to ethnic identity expressions.

“…Language is often a ubiquitous carrier of culture which allows people to become immersed in the group's norms, practices, and values (Fishman, 1999;Haarman, 1986;Kinzler, Shutts, & Correll, 2010). In some cultural groups, language is the only distinctive characteristic that defines one's ethnic group, and moving away from one's ethnic language is sometimes perceived as rejecting and distancing oneself from the ethnic group (Bailey, 2000;Fought, 2006;Yogeeswaran et al, 2011).…”