Abstract
Two studies investigated the weights of physical similarity, labels, and internal properties in 5-year-olds' (n = 64) categorization and inferences regarding three social categories: gender, race, and shirt-color. Participants saw exemplars of varying degrees of similarity to target categories and were asked to categorize the exemplars and draw inferences about them. Varied across studies was the kind of information pitted against visual similarity - labels (Study 1) or internal information (Study 2). Labels had the weakest effect on children's categorization of the most essentialized category - gender. (Essentialism was assessed independently.) Internal property information dominated physical similarity in determining children's categorization of all three categories. We conclude that essentialized social categories are defined as natural kinds, wherein appearances are indicative of intrinsic essences, and thus information about intrinsic properties - but not labels - can lead children to overlook physical dissimilarity.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 56-72 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Cognitive Development |
Volume | 33 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Jan 2015 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2014 Elsevier Inc.
Funding
This research was funded by grant# 672/09 awarded by the Israel Science Foundation to Gil Diesendruck.
Funders | Funder number |
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Israel Science Foundation |
Keywords
- Categorization
- Induction
- Labels
- Perceptual similarity
- Social categories