The development of structural thinking about social categories

Developmental Psychology
Nadya VasilyevaTania Lombrozo

Abstract

Representations of social categories help us make sense of the social world, supporting predictions and explanations about groups and individuals. In an experiment with 156 participants, we explore whether children and adults are able to understand category-property associations (such as the association between "girls" and "liking pink") in structural terms, locating an object of explanation within a larger structure and identifying structural constraints that act on elements of the structure. We show that children as young as 3-4 years old show signs of structural thinking, and that 5-6-year-olds show additional differentiation between structural and nonstructural thinking, yet still fall short of adult performance. These findings introduce structural connections as a new type of nonaccidental relationship between a property and a category, and present a viable alternative to internalist accounts of social categories, such as psychological essentialism. (PsycINFO Database Record

Citations

Sep 25, 2019·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Alexander Noyes, Frank C Keil
Oct 27, 2020·Annual Review of Developmental Psychology·Marjorie Rhodes, Andrew Baron
Aug 24, 2021·Developmental Science·Xin YangYarrow Dunham
Jan 5, 2022·Developmental Science·Xin Yang, Yarrow Dunham

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