Structural explanations for inequality reduce children's biases and promote rectification only if they implicate the high-status group.

Children begin to participate in systems of inequality from a young age, demonstrating biases for high-status groups and willingly accepting group disparities. For adults, highlighting the structural causes of inequality (i.e., policies, norms) can facilitate adaptive outcomes-including reduced biases and greater efforts to rectify inequality-but such efforts have had limited success with children. Here, we considered the possibility that, to be effective in childhood, structural interventions must explicitly address the role of the high-status group in creating the unequal structures. We tested this intervention with children relative to a) a structural explanation that cited a neutral third party as the creator and b) a control explanation (N = 206, ages 5 to 10 y). Relative to those in the other two conditions, children who heard a structural explanation that cited the high-status group as the structures' creators showed lower levels of bias, perceived the hierarchy as less fair, and allocated resources to the low-status group more often. These findings suggest that structural explanations can be effective in childhood, but only if they implicate the high-status group as the structures' creators.

Developmental origins of anti-Black bias in White children in the United States: Exposure to and beliefs about racial inequality.

Anti-Black racism remains a pervasive crisis in the United States. Racist social systems reinforce racial inequalities and perpetuate prejudicial beliefs. These beliefs emerge in childhood, are difficult to change once entrenched in adolescence and adulthood, and lead people to support policies that further reinforce racist systems. Therefore, it is important to identify what leads children to form prejudicial beliefs and biases and what steps can be taken to preempt their development. This study examined how children's exposure to and beliefs about racial inequalities predicted anti-Black biases in a sample of 646 White children (4 to 8 years) living across the United States. We found that for children with more exposure to racial inequality in their daily lives, those who believed that racial inequalities were caused by intrinsic differences between people were more likely to hold racial biases, whereas those who recognized the extrinsic factors underlying racial inequalities held more egalitarian attitudes. Grounded in constructivist theories in developmental science, these results are consistent with the possibility that racial biases emerge in part from the explanatory beliefs that children construct to understand the racial inequalities they see in the world around them.

Stereotypes as prototypes in children's gender concepts.

How do gender stereotypes shape prototypes across development? In the current pre-registered study with children ages 3- to 10-years-old and adults (N = 257), participants made judgements about which members of gender categories (boys and girls) and animal categories (for comparison) were the most representative and informative about their kinds, using simplified scales of five category members varying on a stereotypical feature (e.g., girls wearing more or less pink). Young children chose boys and girls with extreme stereotypical features (e.g., the girl in head-to-toe pink) as both representative and informative of their categories and this tendency declined with age, similar to developmental patterns in prototypes of animal categories. Controlling for age, children whose parents reported more conservative social-political views also held more extreme gender (but not animal) prototypes. Thus, stereotypes play a central role in children's gender prototypes, especially young children and those living in socially-conservative households. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/Ps9BwuukyD0 RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Stereotypes play a central role in children's gender prototypes, especially young children and those in socially-conservative households. Children ages 3-10 and adults chose which girls, boys, and animals were most representative and informative. Younger children chose category members with more extreme stereotypical features (e.g., the girl in head-to-toe pink) than older children and adults. Children with more conservative parents also held more extreme gender prototypes.

The effect of group status on children's hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs.

Members of advantaged groups are more likely than members of disadvantaged groups to think, feel, and behave in ways that reinforce their group's position within the hierarchy. This study examined how children's status within a group-based hierarchy shapes their beliefs about the hierarchy and the groups that comprise it in ways that reinforce the hierarchy. To do this, we randomly assigned children (4-8 years; N = 123; 75 female, 48 male; 21 Asian, 9 Black, 21 Latino/a, 1 Middle-Eastern/North-African, 14 multiracial, 41 White, 16 not-specified) to novel groups that differed in social status (advantaged, disadvantaged, neutral third-party) and assessed their beliefs about the hierarchy. Across five separate assessments, advantaged-group children were more likely to judge the hierarchy to be fair, generalizable, and wrong to challenge and were more likely to hold biased intergroup attitudes and exclude disadvantaged group members. In addition, with age, children in both the advantaged- and disadvantaged-groups became more likely to see membership in their own group as inherited, while at the same time expecting group-relevant behaviors to be determined more by the environment. With age, children also judged the hierarchy to be more unfair and expected the hierarchy to generalize across contexts. These findings provide novel insights into how children's position within hierarchies can contribute to the formation of hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: A total of 123 4-8-year-olds were assigned to advantaged, disadvantaged, and third-party groups within a hierarchy and were assessed on seven hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs about the hierarchy. Advantaged children were more likely to say the hierarchy was fair, generalizable, and wrong to challenge and to hold intergroup biases favoring advantaged group members. With age, advantaged- and disadvantaged-group children held more essentialist beliefs about membership in their own group, but not the behaviors associated with their group. Results suggest that advantaged group status can shape how children perceive and respond to the hierarchies they are embedded within.

Social essentialism in the United States and China: How social and cognitive factors predict within- and cross-cultural variation in essentialist thinking.

People intuitively view some social groups (such as Black people, Muslims, and women) as having biological underpinnings and discrete boundaries. Essentialist beliefs about social groups shape how people view themselves and others, leading to a number of negative social consequences. Whereas previous research has demonstrated variations in social essentialism within some Western societies, less is known about how social essentialism manifests in East Asian cultures that have well-documented differences in social values and cognitive styles from Western cultures. The current research investigated cultural variations in social essentialist thinking in the United States and China to reveal how cultural ideologies and social belief systems shape people's basic representations of the social world. Analyses revealed several cultural and social correlates of social essentialism both between and within the cultures and demonstrated the mediating role of collectivistic values in predicting cultural differences in essentialist beliefs about group coherence.

Asking young children to "do science" instead of "be scientists" increases science engagement in a randomized field experiment.

Subtle features of common language can imply to young children that scientists are a special and distinct kind of person-a way of thinking that can interfere with the development of children's own engagement with science. We conducted a large field experiment (involving 45 prekindergarten schools, 130 teachers, and over 1,100 children) to test if targeting subtle properties of language can increase science engagement in children's daily lives. Despite strong tendencies to describe scientists as a special kind of person (in a baseline control condition), brief video-based training changed the language that teachers used to introduce science to their students. These changes in language were powerful enough to predict children's science interest and behavior days later. Thus, subtle features of language shape children's beliefs and behaviors as they unfold in real world environments. Harnessing these mechanisms could promote science engagement in early childhood.

Parents' Political Ideology Predicts How Their Children Punish.

From an early age, children are willing to pay a personal cost to punish others for violations that do not affect them directly. Various motivations underlie such "costly punishment": People may punish to enforce cooperative norms (amplifying punishment of in-groups) or to express anger at perpetrators (amplifying punishment of out-groups). Thus, group-related values and attitudes (e.g., how much one values fairness or feels out-group hostility) likely shape the development of group-related punishment. The present experiments (N = 269, ages 3-8 from across the United States) tested whether children's punishment varies according to their parents' political ideology-a possible proxy for the value systems transmitted to children intergenerationally. As hypothesized, parents' self-reported political ideology predicted variation in the punishment behavior of their children. Specifically, parental conservatism was associated with children's punishment of out-group members, and parental liberalism was associated with children's punishment of in-group members. These findings demonstrate how differences in group-related ideologies shape punishment across generations.

Who is a typical woman? Exploring variation in how race biases representations of gender across development.

From early in development, race biases how children think about gender-often in a manner that treats Black women as less typical and representative of women in general than White or Asian women. The present study (N = 89, ages 7-11; predominately Hispanic, White, and multi-racial children) examined the generalizability of this phenomenon across middle childhood and the mechanisms underlying variability in its development. Replicating prior work, children were slower and less accurate to categorize the gender of Black women compared to Asian or White women, as well as compared to Black men, suggesting that children perceived Black women as less representative of their gender. These effects were robust across age within a racially and ethnically diverse sample of children. Children's tendencies to view their own racial identities as expansive and flexible, however, attenuated these effects: Children with more flexible racial identities also had gender concepts that were more inclusive of Black women. In contrast, the tendency for race to bias children's gender representations was unrelated to children's multiple classification skill and racial essentialism. These findings shed light on the mechanisms underlying variation in how race biases gender across development, with critical implications for how children's own identities shape the development of intergroup cognition and behavior.

Beliefs about social norms and racial inequalities predict variation in the early development of racial bias.

Racism remains a pervasive force around the world with widespread and well documented harmful consequences for members of marginalized racial groups. The psychological biases that maintain structural and interpersonal racism begin to emerge in early childhood, but with considerable individual variation-some children develop more racial bias than others. The present study (N = 116; 4-year-old children) provides novel insights into the developmental mechanisms underlying the emergence of racial bias by longitudinally documenting how two psychological processes-normative beliefs about interracial friendships and explanatory beliefs about racial inequalities-developmentally predict the emergence of pro-White/anti-Black racial bias during early childhood. In a 6-month, three-wave, longitudinal study, we found that 4-year-old children's beliefs that their parents and peers do not value interracial friendships predicted increased racial bias in and across time and that children's endorsement of essentialist over extrinsic explanations for racial inequalities predicted the developmental trajectory of racial bias over time. These findings suggest that children's foundational beliefs about the social world developmentally predict the emergence of racial bias in early childhood and speak to the importance of early and persistent intervention efforts targeting children's normative beliefs about interracial friendships and explanatory beliefs about racial inequalities.

The Unintended Consequences of the Things We Say: What Generic Statements Communicate to Children About Unmentioned Categories.

Adults frequently use generic language (e.g., "Boys play sports") to communicate information about social groups to children. Whereas previous research speaks to how children often interpret information about the groups described by generic statements, less is known about what generic claims may implicitly communicate about unmentioned groups (e.g., the possibility that "Boys play sports" implies that girls do not). Study 1 (287 four- to six-year-olds, 56 adults) and Study 2 (84 four- to six-year-olds) found that children as young as 4.5 years draw inferences about unmentioned categories from generic claims (but not matched specific statements)-and that the tendency to make these inferences strengthens with age. Study 3 (181 four- to seven-year-olds, 65 adults) provides evidence that pragmatic reasoning serves as a mechanism underlying these inferences. We conclude by discussing the role that generic language may play in inadvertently communicating social stereotypes to young children.

Does It Matter How We Speak About Social Kinds? A Large, Preregistered, Online Experimental Study of How Language Shapes the Development of Essentialist Beliefs.

A problematic way to think about social categories is to essentialize them-to treat particular differences between people as marking fundamentally distinct social kinds. From where do these beliefs arise? Language that expresses generic claims about categories elicits some aspects of essentialism, but the scope of these effects remains unclear. This study (N = 204, ages 4.5-8 years, 73% White; recruited predominantly from the United States and the United Kingdom to participate online in 2019) found that generic language increases two critical aspects of essentialist thought: Beliefs that (a) category-related properties arise from intrinsic causal mechanisms and (b) category boundaries are inflexible. These findings have implications for understanding the spread of essentialist beliefs across communities and the development of intergroup behavior.

Categories convey prescriptive information across domains and development.

Young children display a pervasive bias to assume that what they observe in the world reflects how things are supposed to be. The current 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 aged 4 to 9 years 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 domain-specific beliefs about category structure.

Why do children show racial biases in their resource allocation decisions?

Young children often prefer people high in status and with access to resources. Children also favor fairness and equality, especially when it comes to sharing. Two studies examined how children (N = 185; age range = 4.0-6.9 years, Mage = 5.49 years; 45% White, 12% Asian, 11% Black, 7% Hispanic, 24% other or undisclosed) reconcile these conflicting preferences by investigating the relation between children's social preferences and resource allocations to White and Black children. Race provides an important case to examine how children resolve this conflict given that children show preferences for stereotypically high-status (White) people but also show awareness of systemic racial inequality that disadvantages Black people. In a costly sharing resource allocation task (i.e., Dictator Game) where participants were asked how much of a limited resource they wanted to share with a Black child and a White child, Study 1 revealed that participants sometimes chose to share more with a White child compared with a Black child but that biased giving was unrelated to children's biased feelings of warmth toward White children. Study 2 confirmed that biased giving was unrelated to children's feelings of warmth and instead implicated children's beliefs about race and wealth; children who expected White people to have more wealth showed more pro-White bias in their giving behavior. Together, these results suggest that cultural stereotypes about wealth might shape children's economic decision making in a way that perpetuates disadvantage, but they also indicate that the processes underlying resource allocation decisions warrant further study.

The Development of Intersectional Social Prototypes.

Race and gender information overlap to shape adults' representations of social categories. This overlap may contribute to the psychological "invisibility" of people whose race and gender identities are perceived to have conflicting stereotypes. The present research (N = 249) examined when race begins to bias representations of gender across development. Children and adults engaged in a speeded task in which they categorized photographs of faces of women and men from three racial categories: Asian, Black, and White (four photographs per gender and racial group). In Study 1, participants were slower to categorize photographs of Black women as women than photographs of White and Asian women as women and Black men as men. They also were more likely to miscategorize photographs of Black women as men and less likely to stereotype Black women as feminine. Study 2 replicated these findings and provided evidence of a developmental shift in categorization speed. An omnibus analysis provided a high-powered test of this developmental hypothesis, revealing that target race begins biasing children's gender categorization around age 5. Implications for the development of social-category representation are discussed.

Asking Children to "Be Helpers" Can Backfire After Setbacks.

Describing behaviors as reflecting categories (e.g., asking children to "be helpers") has been found to increase pro-social behavior. The present studies (N = 139, ages 4-5) tested whether such effects backfire if children experience setbacks while performing category-relevant actions. In Study 1, children were asked either to "be helpers" or "to help," and then pretended to complete a series of successful scenarios (e.g., pouring milk) and unsuccessful scenarios (e.g., spilling milk while trying to pour). After the unsuccessful trials, children asked to "be helpers" had more negative attitudes. In Study 2, asking children to "be helpers" impeded children's helping behavior after they experienced difficulties while trying to help. Implications for how category labels shape beliefs and behavior are discussed.

Does the concept of obligation develop from the inside-out or outside-in?

Tomasello proposes that the concept of obligation develops "from the inside-out": emerging first in experiences of shared agency and generalizing outward to shape children's broader understanding. Here I consider that obligation may also develop "from the outside-in," emerging as a domain-specific instantiation of a more general conceptual bias to expect categories to prescribe how their members are supposed to behave.

Subtle Linguistic Cues Increase Girls' Engagement in Science.

The roots of gender disparities in science achievement take hold in early childhood. The present studies aimed to identify a modifiable feature of young children's environments that could be targeted to reduce gender differences in science behavior among young children. Four experimental studies with children ( N = 501) revealed that describing science in terms of actions ("Let's do science! Doing science means exploring the world!") instead of identities ("Let's be scientists! Scientists explore the world!") increased girls' subsequent persistence in new science games designed to illustrate the scientific method. These studies thus identified subtle but powerful linguistic cues that could be targeted to help reduce gender disparities in science engagement in early childhood.

Is the most representative skunk the average or the stinkiest? Developmental changes in representations of biological categories.

People often think of categories in terms of their most representative examples (e.g., robin for BIRD). Thus, determining which exemplars are most representative is a fundamental cognitive process that shapes how people use concepts to navigate the world. The present studies (N = 669; ages 5 years - adulthood) revealed developmental change in this important component of cognition. Studies 1-2 found that young children view exemplars with extreme values of characteristic features (e.g., the very fastest cheetah) as most representative of familiar biological categories; the tendency to view average exemplars in this manner (e.g., the average-speeded cheetah) emerged slowly across age. Study 3 examined the mechanisms underlying these judgments, and found that participants of all ages viewed extreme exemplars as representative of novel animal categories when they learned that the variable features fulfilled category-specific adaptive needs, but not otherwise. Implications for developmental changes in conceptual structure and biological reasoning are discussed.

Children lose confidence in their potential to "be scientists," but not in their capacity to "do science".

Over the course of middle childhood, children's interest and beliefs about their own capacities for success in science often decline. This pernicious decline is especially evident among underrepresented groups, including girls, members of some racial and ethnic minorities, and children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The present research (N = 306, ages 6-11) found that while children lose interest and feelings of efficacy about their potential to "be scientists" across middle childhood, they maintain more robust interest and efficacy about "doing science." These patterns were confirmed in both longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses; effects were stable or increased across time and age. Mediation analyses revealed that the positive effect of action framing is partially accounted for by children's views that the group of people who do science is more inclusive than the category of scientists. These findings suggest that using action-focused language to encourage children in science is more inclusive and may lead to more science engagement across middle childhood than language that emphasizes scientists as an identity category. Implications for educational practices will be discussed.

The Nature and Consequences of Essentialist Beliefs About Race in Early Childhood.

It is widely believed that race divides the world into biologically distinct kinds of people-an essentialist belief inconsistent with reality. Essentialist views of race have been described as early emerging, but this study found that young children (n = 203, Mage  = 5.45) hold only the more limited belief that the physical feature of skin color is inherited and stable. Overall, children rejected the causal essentialist view that behavioral and psychological characteristics are constrained by an inherited racial essence. Although average levels of children's causal essentialist beliefs about race were low, variation in these beliefs was related to children's own group membership, exposure to diversity, as well as children's own social attitudes.