The Origins of Social Categorization

Abstract

Forming conceptually rich social categories helps people navigate the complex social world by allowing them to reason about others’ likely thoughts, beliefs, actions, and interactions as guided by group membership. Yet, social categorization often has nefarious consequences. We suggest that the foundation of the human ability to form useful social categories is in place in infancy: social categories guide infants’ inferences about peoples’ shared characteristics and social relationships. We also suggest that the ability to form abstract social categories may be separable from the eventual negative downstream consequences of social categorization, including prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping. Whereas a tendency to form inductively rich social categories appears early in ontogeny, prejudice based on each particular category dimension may not be inevitable.

Perception of Face Race by Infants: Five Developmental Changes

“…Although the studies of spontaneous preference described earlier (14) show that younger infants look longer to the more frequently experienced faces of their own race, this need not imply that infants like faces of their own race better or attach greater positive valence to them (29). However, the mere exposure effect in which familiarity induces liking is well known, and in a recent study, adults judged more familiar faces as happier (30).…”

Children's neural processing of moral scenarios provides insight into the formation and reduction of in‐group biases

“…They also favor same-race peers (Dunham, Baron, & Banaji, 2008) and exhibit parochial tendencies in resource distribution (Fehr, Glätzle-Rützler, & Sutter, 2013;Moore, 2009). Considering that merely belonging to a social category does not inevitably result in bias or out-group derogation (Liberman, Woodward, & Kinzler, 2017), it is becoming increasingly important to determine the factors which may affect the strengthening or reduction of basic in-group preferences while they are still relatively malleable. Considering that merely belonging to a social category does not inevitably result in bias or out-group derogation (Liberman, Woodward, & Kinzler, 2017), it is becoming increasingly important to determine the factors which may affect the strengthening or reduction of basic in-group preferences while they are still relatively malleable.…”

“…For example, children (3-to 11-year-olds) expect in-group members to be more likely to conform to social conventions and out-group members to be more likely to break conventional rules, and older children (7-to 11-year-olds) use social group membership to form expectations about which people would be more likely to act morally versus immorally (Liberman et al, 2017). For example, children (3-to 11-year-olds) expect in-group members to be more likely to conform to social conventions and out-group members to be more likely to break conventional rules, and older children (7-to 11-year-olds) use social group membership to form expectations about which people would be more likely to act morally versus immorally (Liberman et al, 2017).…”

Children's Initial Responses and Beyond: Effects of Niceness and Similarity on Preference, Giving, and Memory

“…Of course, how children respond to similar others will depend very much on the dimension of similarity. For example, children consider themselves as similar to others along many dimensions (Liberman et al, 2017), including language (e.g., Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007;Kinzler, Shutts, DeJesus, & Spelke, 2009) and race (e.g., Aboud, 1988;Baron & Banaji, 2006;Kinzler & Spelke, 2011). Studying children's responses toward-and explicit memory about-nice and similar others along these other dimensions of similarity (as well as various dimensions of "niceness") should reveal informative patterns in the relative impact of niceness and similarity over time, helping explicate fundamental factors contributing to the development of social views.…”

“…Here, we focused on two social characteristics that have previously been shown to guide children's responses: niceness and similarity. Although there are innumerable ways that children may consider themselves as similar to others (for review, see Liberman, Woodward, & Kinzler, ; and see Discussion for more on this issue), we conveyed similarity based on shared preferences given past research suggesting that this dimension of similarity is recognized and appreciated in similar ways to the dimension of niceness. For example, before they celebrate their first birthday, infants prefer nice individuals (Buon et al., ; Hamlin & Wynn, ; Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, ; Scola, Holvoet, Arciszewski, & Picard, ) and individuals who are helpful toward nice individuals (Hamlin, Wynn, Bloom, & Mahajan, ).…”