What Is a Group? Young Children’s Perceptions of Different Types of Groups and Group Entitativity

Abstract

To date, developmental research on groups has focused mainly on in-group biases and intergroup relations. However, little is known about children’s general understanding of social groups and their perceptions of different forms of group. In this study, 5- to 6-year-old children were asked to evaluate prototypes of four key types of groups: an intimacy group (friends), a task group (people who are collaborating), a social category (people who look alike), and a loose association (people who coincidently meet at a tram stop). In line with previous work with adults, the vast majority of children perceived the intimacy group, task group, and social category, but not the loose association, to possess entitativity, that is, to be a ‘real group.’ In addition, children evaluated group member properties, social relations, and social obligations differently in each type of group, demonstrating that young children are able to distinguish between different types of in-group relations. The origins of the general group typology used by adults thus appear early in development. These findings contribute to our knowledge about children's intuitive understanding of groups and group members' behavior.

So It Is, So It Shall Be: Group Regularities License Children's Prescriptive Judgments

“…Here, we gave no background information about the groups, therefore leaving open children's perceptions. Children who perceived the groups as intimately related (e.g., families, friends) may have relied on notions of group loyalty, whereas those who conceptualized the groups as task focused (e.g., sports teams) may have relied on notions on interdependence (see Lickel et al, 2000;Pl€ otner, Over, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2016).…”

The Origins of Social Categorization

“…Preferring “minimal” ingroup members begins early in childhood. In both classic experiments, like the Robber’s Cave [122], and more modern research [44, 123–125], children prefer other people who are in their randomly assigned group.…”

Infants possess an abstract expectation of ingroup support

“…In contrast, cognitive accounts focus on categorization, essentialism, and other cognitive processes that facilitate sorting individuals into social categories and learning about the properties and behaviors shared by members of the same category (8,21). Some proponents of cognitive accounts have also suggested that conceptual structures for group cognition, such as a naive theory of sociology or a folk theory of groups (11,22,23), support children's ability to identify the groups in their social environments and to learn about patterns of interactions within and across groups.…”