Thinking Fast and Slow: Children’s Descriptive-To-Prescriptive Tendency Under Varying Time Constraints

Roberts, Steven O.; Horii, Rina

doi:10.1080/15248372.2019.1599001

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Although adults can be quite vocal about their prescriptive social judgments (Brady et al, 2017;Okimoto & Brescoll, 2010), some of these views only become apparent when task demands are high (or when measured implicitly; Baron & Banaji, 2006;Phillips & Cushman, 2017). For instance, in speeded judgment tasks, adults often endorse more homogeneous views of categories-similar to young children-about both familiar animal kinds (e.g., Kelemen & Rosset, 2009) and familiar social kinds (e.g., Eidson & Coley, 2014; but see also Roberts & Horii, 2019, for contrasting findings with children). Together, the results of the present study and of prior work raise the possibility that age-related changes towards increased acceptance of non-conformity relate to changes across development in the evidence required to see novel kinds as meaningful, and changes in people's beliefs about when it is appropriate to disapprove of others, rather than a decrease in prescriptive reasoning per se.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Categories convey prescriptive information across domains and development

Foster‐Hanson

Roberts

Gelman

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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Young children display a pervasive bias to assume that what they observe in the world reflects how things are supposed to be. The present studies examined the nature of this bias, by testing whether it reflects a particular form of reasoning about human social behaviors or a more general feature of category representations. Children ages 4-9 and adults (N = 747) evaluated instances of nonconformity among members of novel biological and human social kinds.Children held prescriptive expectations for both animal and human categories-in both cases, they said it was wrong for a category member to engage in category-atypical behavior. These prescriptive judgments about categories depended on the extent to which people saw the pictured individual examples as representative of coherent categories. Thus, early prescriptive judgments appear to rely on the interplay between general conceptual biases and domainspecific beliefs about category structure.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Categories convey prescriptive information across domains and development

Foster‐Hanson

Roberts

Gelman

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…Our research made important theoretical contributions. Past research suggests that preschoolers’ descriptive-to-prescriptive reasoning is easy to elicit, is robust across cultural contexts, and powerfully influences children’s social, moral, and epistemic cognition (Roberts, Ho, et al, 2017; Roberts et al, 2018, 2019, in press; Roberts & Horii, 2019). Our research tested whether this early emerging tendency is swayed by explanations for norm violations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Explanations for norm violations affect preschoolers’ judgments of norm violators.

Wye¹,

Wang²,

Roberts³

2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Preschoolers commonly interpret how a group is as evidence for how individual group members should be—often leading to emphatic disapproval of norm violations (i.e., descriptive-to-prescriptive reasoning). The present research suggests that this tendency is shaped by how preschoolers explain group norm violations. In Study 1, preschoolers held norm violators accountable for their actions (e.g., they evaluated them as bad and withheld resources from them), suggesting that they construed norm violations as internally motivated and avoidable acts deserving of blame. In Study 2, preschoolers were most disapproving of those who violated norms because of preferences (e.g., because they liked to), less disapproving of those who did so because of traits (e.g., because of an aversion), and least disapproving of those who did so because of situations (e.g., because of an external constraint), suggesting that explanations for norm violations affect preschoolers’ judgments of norm violators. Thus, similar to a judge’s sentence or a jury’s verdict, preschoolers’ reasoning about the (mis)behavior of others is affected by why the behavior occurred.

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“…Although adults can be quite vocal about their prescriptive social judgments (Brady et al, 2017;Okimoto & Brescoll, 2010), some of these views only become apparent when task demands are high (or when measured implicitly; Baron & Banaji, 2006;Phillips & Cushman, 2017). For instance, in speeded judgment tasks, adults often endorse more homogeneous views of categories-similar to young children-about both familiar animal kinds (e.g., Kelemen & Rossett, 2009) and familiar social kinds (e.g., Eidson & Coley, 2014; but see also Roberts & Horii, 2019, for contrasting findings with children). Adults also show subtle biases to think about natural kinds as progressing toward teleological goals (Kelemen et al, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Categories convey prescriptive information across domains and development

Foster‐Hanson¹,

Roberts²,

Gelman³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Young children display a pervasive bias to assume that what they observe in the world reflects how things are supposed to be. The present studies examined the nature of this bias, by testing whether it reflects a particular form of social reasoning or a more general feature of category representations. Children ages 4-9 and adults (N = 747) evaluated instances of nonconformity among members of novel biological and social kinds. Children held prescriptive expectations for both animal and social categories—in both cases, they said it was wrong for a category member to engage in category-atypical behavior. These prescriptive judgments about categories depended on the extent to which people saw the pictured individual examples as representative of coherent categories. Thus, early prescriptive judgments appear to rely on the interplay between general conceptual biases and domain-specific beliefs about category structure.

show abstract

Thinking Fast and Slow: Children’s Descriptive-To-Prescriptive Tendency Under Varying Time Constraints

Cited by 13 publications

References 20 publications

Categories convey prescriptive information across domains and development

Categories convey prescriptive information across domains and development

Explanations for norm violations affect preschoolers’ judgments of norm violators.

Categories convey prescriptive information across domains and development

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