The intergenerational transmission of ethnic essentialism: how parents talk counts the most

Abstract

The present study analyzed the role of parents as potential sources of children's essentialist beliefs about ethnicity. We tested 76 parent-child (5-year-olds) dyads of Jewish Israeli parents from three social groups, defined by the kindergartens children attended: national religious, secular, or Jewish-Arab integrated. We assessed parents' and children's beliefs, and parents' usage of ethnic attitudinal and categorization markers in a book-reading activity. Overall, national religious parents manifested the strongest ethnic essentialism and endorsement of anti-negotiations with Palestinians, and were the most likely to express negative attitudes and mark ethnic categories in their conversations with their children. Moreover, regression analyses revealed that ethnic categorization in parents' speech was the most reliable predictor of children's ethnic essentialism. Ethnic essentialism is transmitted to children not via explicit communication of intergroup beliefs or attitudes, but rather via the sheer marking of categories in ways that resonate with children's own intuitive ways of conceptualizing the social world.

Development of essentialist thinking about religion categories in Northern Ireland (and the United States).

“…As parents choose the primary school attended by their child, the school chosen may be an indicator of the political attitudes to which the child is exposed at home, which may be the critical component in the development of essentialist thinking (see Degner & Dalege, 2013). Indeed, it has recently been argued that essentialism in Israel is caused more by parental language than by choice of school environment, which turns out to be predicted by parental attitudes (see Segall et al, 2015). This implies that a segregated school environment per se may play little role in the development of essentialist beliefs about ethnicity categories amongst Israeli children.…”

Stereotypes, theory of mind, and the action–prediction hierarchy

“…Participants then rated social categories on a scale of 'underlying reality or sameness.' Another measure of essentialism often used with children is the adoption task, which asks children to imagine an individual from social category A being adopted at birth by a family from social category B, and then asking the child whether the individual will grow up to display more A-traits or B-traits (Gelman and Wellman 1991;Hirschfeld and Gelman 1997;Segall et al 2015).…”

“…Famously, essentialist thinking about particular groups also appears to be triggered in part by certain linguistic cues, such as generic statements (e.g. "Boys like trucks and girls like dolls,") (Gelman and Roberts 2017;Rhodes et al 2012;Segall et al 2015). Thus, while younger children across different environments develop a similar basic set of theory of mind abilities, their reliance on particular essentialist stereotypes is greatly affected by numerous social factors.…”

Gender Essentialism in Children and Parents: Implications for the Development of Gender Stereotyping and Gender-Typed Preferences

“…Although parents appear to rarely articulate explicit essentialist beliefs (Gelman et al 1998(Gelman et al , 2004, language use consistent with essentialist views of categories (i.e., labeling, especially the use of kind-referring generics, as in BGirls like to play with dolls^) appears to prompt essentialist construals on the part of children as early as preschool age. This phenomenon has been demonstrated regarding both familiar social categories (Segall et al 2015) and novel animal and social categories (Gelman et al 2010;Rhodes et al 2012). Studying how parents' and children's gender essentialism relate will contribute to this issue.…”