Development of social category representations: early appreciation of roles and deontic relations.
Three experiments explored the significance of deontic properties (involving rights and obligations) in representations of social categories. Preschool-aged children (M = 4.8), young school-aged children (M = 8.2), and adults judged the centrality of behavioral, psychological, and deontic properties for both familiar (Experiments 1 and 2, Ns = 50 and 52, respectively) and novel (Experiment 3, N = 64) social categories. Preschool-aged children were the most consistent in treating deontic properties as central: Knowing a person's social category membership was more informative about obligations than about behavioral frequencies or psychological preferences. Adults treated deontic properties as central to some categories but also recognized a set that was primarily predictive of psychological dispositions. The results argue for the significance of deontic properties in the development of social cognition.
Kalish
Charles W
CW
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin, 1025 West Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53711, USA. cwkalish@wisc.edu
Lawson
Christopher A
CA
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001290:Attitude; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D019545:Intuition; D007600:Judgment; D015146:Midwestern United States; D010551:Personality; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011582:Psychological Theory; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012380:Role; D012919:Social Behavior; D012933:Social Identification; D012941:Social Responsibility; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires