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About this paper symposium
| Panel information |
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| Panel 17. Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context |
| Paper #1 | |
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| How Culture Shapes the Structure of Essentialist Beliefs: Evidence from China and the USA | |
| Author information | Role |
| Dr. Yian Xu, Ph.D., Kennesaw State University, United States | Presenting author |
| Michelle Wang, PhD Candidate, New York University, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Dr. Kelsy Moty, Ph.D., New York University, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Dr. Marjorie Rhodes, Ph.D., New York University, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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Thinking that all cheetahs share the same level of speed, or that a baby girl will inevitably prefer pink to blue, reflects essentialist beliefs about categories and their features as determined by intrinsic essences (Medin & Ortony, 1989; Gelman, 2003). Such essentialist beliefs are often inaccurate representations of the world, which can hinder scientific reasoning and contribute to social prejudice (Haslam, 2017; Shtulman & Schulz, 2008). Whereas essentialist beliefs have been found pervasive across societies and emerging in early years, no research to date has investigated how cultural contexts might shape the structure of early essentialist beliefs broadly, beyond pointing them to which categories to apply these essentialist beliefs (e.g., Diesendruck et al., 2013; Pauker et al., 2016; Smyth et al., 2017). The present research aims to shed light on how essentialist beliefs about categories originate, by revealing the extent to which their development and instantiation is shaped by culturally-situated processes. To do so, we compared the developmental trajectories of essentialist beliefs among children growing up in the United States and China (N = 531; ages 3-6). Modeled on previous research, we used five essentialism tasks (see Figure 1) to measure children’s beliefs in categories and their features as (a) fixed-at-birth, (b) inflexible, (c) homogeneous, (d) objective, and (e) explanatory. We measured children’s essentialist beliefs about familiar and novel animal (girls vs. “Zarpies”) and social categories (cats vs. “Zarpies”), to shed light on cultural variation in the structure of essentialist beliefs more generally, rather than only on a single aspect of essentialism for particular categories. Additionally, we also compared whether children recruited from the above two contexts show differences in underlying conceptual biases relevant to essentialist beliefs. These include children’s general biases to: (a) infer internal- and individual-based causes over external or relational ones (Carstensen et al., 2019; Salomon & Cimpian, 2014; Walker & Gopnik, 2014), (b) defer to experts regarding the labeling of ambiguous exemplars (Jaswal, 2004), and (c) draw over-hypotheses based on limited patterns of evidence (Macario et al., 1990). We found that essentialist beliefs emerged across early childhood in both communities, but their instantiation and trajectories varied across cultures. In the sample recruited from the United States (but not from China), essentialist beliefs that categories and their features are fixed-at-birth and inflexible increased across age. On the other hand, in the sample recruited from China, children held stronger beliefs that categories are objective and explanatory and viewed them as more homogenous with age. These patterns were largely consistent across domains and category types and are broadly consistent with recent cross-cultural findings among Chinese and American adult populations (Coley et al., 2019; Xu et al., 2023). Furthermore, children sampled from these two contexts also showed variation in basic explanatory, linguistic, and inferential processes relevant to essentialist beliefs. Our finding suggests that cultural variation in the early development of essentialism might reflect variation in basic conceptual biases that children rely upon to build intuitive theories of the world. |
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| Paper #2 | |
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| Developmental Trajectories in Children’s Essentialist Reasoning about Social Categories in the Religiously-Diverse Context of Lebanon | |
| Author information | Role |
| Dr. Maliki E. Ghossainy, Ph.D., Boston University, United States | Presenting author |
| Dr. Tamer Amin, Ph.D., American University of Beirut, Lebanon | Non-presenting author |
| Stephanie Farah, Doctoral Student, University of Kostanz, Germany | Non-presenting author |
| Ghadir Soueidan, American University of Beirut, Lebanon | Non-presenting author |
| Lyn Maasarani, American University of Beirut, Lebanon | Non-presenting author |
| Tia El-Amin, American University of Beirut, Lebanon | Non-presenting author |
| Mahatab El-Haj, American University of Beirut, Lebanon | Non-presenting author |
| Jana Chokor, American University of Beirut, Lebanon | Non-presenting author |
| Julia Ganama, Utrecht University, Netherlands | Non-presenting author |
| Patricia Arkhondis, American University of Beirut, Lebanon | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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Social essentialism is a cognitive process through which group membership categories are seen as having unchangeable and inherent fundamental essences (Gelman, 2003). This mechanism can shape prejudiced beliefs and attitudes (Mandalaywala et al., 2018) creating barriers to intergroup contact (Zagefka et al., 2013). Two theoretical approaches explain the development of social essentialism (Rhodes & Moty, 2020): (1) biological markers encourage the essentializing of social categories and (2) cultural salience and contextual factors influence children's essentialist interpretation. Our study is the first to explore these developmental processes by comparing essentialist beliefs of children from different religious denominations in Lebanon. We interviewed a total of 170 Christian Orthodox, Christian Maronite, Muslim Shia, and Muslim Sunni children aged 4 to 10 years old on their essentialist beliefs about gender, religion, and wealth. We found that, generally, children demonstrated the highest levels of essentialization for gender and the lowest for wealth. The extent to which children essentialized gender and religion remained largely unchanged over the age range studied, there was a decrease in essentialization of wealth across all groups. Further analyses reveal differences in essentialization patterns among religious groups. For example, Christian Maronite children showed stability in their essentializing of gender, but reduced tendency to essentialize both religion and wealth with age. In contrast, the degree to which Shia Muslim children essentialized wealth remained largely stable, whereas their tendency to essentialize gender and religion increased. Overall, our findings suggest cross-cultural similarities with previous work in other contexts, especially in the relative extent of essentializing different social categories (gender > religion＞wealth). However, differences in developmental trends within our sample and in comparison with others (Davoodi et al., 2020), especially in essentializing religion suggest the influence of unique contextual factors. We discuss our findings in relation to the biological relevance and cultural salience accounts of social essentialism. |
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| Paper #3 | |
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| Intersectional Racial Identities Impacts Children's Essentialist Beliefs and Consequences of American and Singaporean National Identities | |
| Author information | Role |
| Jordan Keoni Legaspi, MS, University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States | Presenting author |
| Petrina Hui Xian Low, MS, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore | Non-presenting author |
| Dr. Peipei Setoh, Ph.D., Nanyang Technological University, Singapore | Non-presenting author |
| Dr. Tara Mandalaywala, Ph.D., Boston University, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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Many children as young as 4-5 years old express essentialist beliefs about both race and nationality, and these essentialist beliefs can be associated with increased prejudice toward racially or nationally marginalized groups (Hussak & Cimpian, 2019; Davoodi, 2020). In recent work, we found that American adults display intersectional essentialist beliefs, such that a diverse group of Americans essentialize national identity (i.e., “Americanness”) more in White, vs. nonwhite Latine, targets, and that this biased essentialism is specifically associated with prejudice toward Latine Americans, a marginalized group. In the present talk, we extend this work in developmental and cross-cultural directions, to explore how intersecting identities influence the development and consequences of essentialist beliefs. Across two pre-registered studies, we explore whether national identity is essentialized differently based on target racial identity, asking about “Americanness” for White and Latine targets in a sample of 5-12 years-old White American children (n = 112), and about “Singaporeanness” for East-Asian Chinese and South-Asian Indian targets in an ongoing sample of 5-10 years-old Singaporean children (n =108). Children completed two essentialism tasks, one to assess beliefs about the stability of national identity and a second to assess beliefs about the inductive potential of national identity in contrast to race (see Figure 2). Children then completed a group-based feelings thermometer to assess prejudice toward racial and national ingroups and outgroups. Across both essentialism tasks, American children essentialized national identity more than Singaporean children. American children show similarities and differences to American adults. Unlike American adults, children overall did not essentialize stability of national identity more in White, vs. Latine, targets. However, like American adults, children who essentialized stability of nationality more in White, vs. Latine, targets also expressed more prejudice toward Latine targets. Additionally, like American adults, children thought nationality provided more inductive potential than race in both White American and Latine American targets. The pattern of results was substantively different in Singaporean children. Singaporean children not only essentialized stability of national identity more in Chinese, vs. Indian, targets, but were actively anti-essentialist with Indian targets. Singaporean children’s relations between essentializing stability of Singaporeanness and prejudice toward South-Asian and non-Singaporean targets were more nuanced. Further, in contrast to American children and adults, Singaporean children thought nationality provided more inductive potential than race for South-Asian Singaporean targets only, whereas they were at chance for East-Asian Singaporean targets. Our study is one of the first to demonstrate empirically that the development and consequences of children’s essentialist reasoning is both intersectional and culturally specific, and one of the first to expand upon previous work assessing the development of racial attitudes in Singapore (Setoh & Sudo et. al., 2023; Lee & Setoh, 2023). In this talk, we delve further into the theoretical and practical value of investigating cognitive precursors to prejudice through intersectional and cross-cultural lenses. |
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| Paper #4 | |
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| Essentialism is Positively Related to Classist Attitudes, but negatively Related to Homophobic Attitudes in Childhood | |
| Author information | Role |
| Jane Singman, Purdue University, United States | Presenting author |
| Dr. Rebecca Peretz-Lange, Ph.D., Vassar College, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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From a young age, children intuitively assume that the social world reflects nature rather than nurture — a set of intuitions known as “social essentialism.” Essentialist intuitions have been widely described as socially pernicious and prejudice-promoting. For example, this thinking leads children to reason that subordinate groups must be in that position because they are intrinsically inferior rather than extrinsically disadvantaged — a prejudiced conclusion. A growing literature examines these processes and demonstrates that essentialist thinking contributes to early prejudices based on race, gender, and class (see Rhodes & Mandalaywala, 2017 for a review). Complicating the story of essentialism-prejudice relations, there also exist identities which, at least among adults, are reduced by essentialist thinking, such as prejudices based on sexual orientation, weight, and disability. For these forms of prejudice, essentialism can facilitate a view that people are “born that way,” reducing prejudice and blame for stigmatized identities (see Peretz-Lange, 2021 for a review). To date, however, very little developmental work has examined these forms of prejudice, focusing instead almost entirely on the domains of race, gender, and class. This imbalance constrains basic research by not leaving room to detect the potentially helpful effects essentialism may have in understudied domains. Particularly scarce are studies that examine a range of different identities within-subjects, to examine how essentialism might simultaneously have prejudice-promoting and -reducing effects within the mind of a single child. In the present study, we explored how essentialism-prejudice relations vary across five domains of prejudice (race, class, sexual orientation, weight, and disability). We selected these domains because they diverse prejudice-essentialism relations according to adult work. As preregistered, six- to ten-year-olds were recruited from around the US (n=100, 52% of color, 47% White) and tested over Zoom. Prejudice was assessed through a playmate preference task (eight trials in each domain, in randomized order) and social essentialism was assessed as the extent to which participants reported that an identity was biologically-determined and stable over time. Results indicated that children showed above-chance rates of prejudice across all five domains, preferring playmates who were White (p = .03), wealthy (p < .001), thin (p < .001), able-bodied (p < .001), and from heteroparental families (p < .001). However, children’s essentialist beliefs varied across domains (p < .001), as did the relation between essentialist beliefs and prejudice. In particular, analyses revealed a significant difference in how essentialism was related to prejudice in the domains of class vs. sexual orientation (p = .008) (see Figure 3). Essentialism promoted class-based prejudice but reduced homophobic prejudice, in line with findings from adults. Relations further varied across the domains of race, weight, and disability. Results represent the first evidence, to our knowledge, that essentialism predicts reduced homophobia in childhood, as well as some of the first within-subjects work demonstrating the diverse consequences of essentialist thinking across domains in childhood. Results add nuance to discussions of essentialism as socially harmful and raise questions about whether there may be a place for selective essentialist thinking in the minds of young children. |
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Expanding the Framework of Social Essentialism: Developmental Research from China, Lebanon, Singapore and United States
Submission Type
Paper Symposium
Description
| Session Title | Expanding the Framework of Social Essentialism: Developmental Research from China, Lebanon, Singapore and United States |