RR: Collaborative: Origins of Intergroup Perceptions and Attitudes Across Diverse Contexts

在生命的头五年里，儿童会熟练地将他人归类为社会类别，这对儿童的感知和与他人的互动具有广泛的影响。然而，关于儿童如何处理社会类别的许多已知知识是基于在有限人口中进行的研究(就只包括来自特定种族/民族、地理和社会经济背景的儿童而言)。通过利用来自不同背景的儿童在美国不同地区接触多样性的自然差异，当前的项目将有助于更好地理解美国各地的幼儿如何对社会类别进行概念化和推理。第二个目标是测试过去关于儿童社会范畴理解的结果的稳健性，并为最近对科学的透明度、重复性和普适性的呼吁做出贡献。该项目涉及五个地点(夏威夷、西南部、西北部、东南部和东北部)，每个地点包括来自不同人口背景的4至5岁的儿童。重点是早期社会类别知识的四个核心组成部分：儿童对不同社会类别成员的态度；亲社会行为；面部识别；以及对不同社会类别成员地位的看法。孩子们将完成一个标准化的方案和任务组，评估美国所有五个地理位置的每个组件。这项研究将检查结果是否可以在人口结构不同的地理区域重现。它还将调查每个儿童内部的个别任务如何相互关联(例如，对不同群体儿童的地位感知和行为之间的关系)。这一方法还将允许测试过去关于儿童对社会类别的知识的结果的稳健性，并将有助于最近对科学的透明度、重复性和普适性的呼吁。这一目标将通过以下方式实现：(1)张贴所有研究材料，以便确切的方法可以在其他地方实施；(2)张贴所有最终数据，以便其他人可以重新分析数据；(3)根据最近关于研究透明度的建议，预先登记拟议的分析。通过更好地了解群体间看法和态度的根源，预计更广泛的影响将支持有重点的干预措施，促进不同群体之间的积极关系。

Within the first five years of life, children become adept at categorizing others into social categories, which has wide-ranging implications for children's perceptions and interactions with others. Yet much of what is known about how children process social categories is based on studies conducted with limited populations (in terms of only including children from certain race/ethnic, geographical, and socioeconomic backgrounds). By harnessing natural variation in exposure to diversity in different regions of the U.S. among children from different backgrounds, the current project will lead to a better understanding of how young children from throughout the United States conceptualize and reason about social categories. A second goal is to test the robustness of past results regarding children's social category understanding and to contribute to recent calls for transparency, reproducibility, and generalizability in science.The project involves five sites (Hawaii, the Southwest, the Northwest, the Southeast, and the Northeast), with each site including 4- to 5-year-old children from multiple demographic backgrounds. The focus is on four core components of early social category knowledge: children's attitudes towards; prosocial behavior with; facial recognition of; and perceptions of status of members of different social categories. Children will complete a standardized protocol and task battery that assesses each of these components across all five geographic locations in the U.S. The research will examine whether results are reproducible across geographic regions that differ in their demographics. It will also investigate how individual tasks relate to each other within each child (e.g., the relationship between perceptions of status and behavior towards children from different groups). This approach will also allow tests of the robustness of past results regarding children's knowledge of social categories and will contribute to recent calls for transparency, reproducibility, and generalizability in science. This goal will be implemented by: (1) posting all study materials so that the exact methods can be implemented elsewhere; (2) posting all final data so that others can re-analyze the data; and (3) pre-registering the proposed analyses in line with recent recommendations for transparency in research. By achieving a better understanding of the origins of intergroup perceptions and attitudes, broader impacts are expected to support focused interventions that promote positive relations between different groups of people.