RUI: Mechanisms Underlying the Development of Social Categorization

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。孩子们以不同的方式将世界分成不同的群体，包括种族和性别。孩子们在脑海中代表这些群体的方式往往是负面结果的基础，比如刻板印象和偏见行为。然而，与孩子互动的人并不只属于一个群体；他们同时是多个群体的一部分。这种观点通常不被认可，甚至在先前的研究中更很少被采用。认识到这一观点并将其纳入研究是很重要的，因为它阐明了具有多重边缘化身份的人所面临的独特偏见形式。该项目将调查儿童如何整合多个群体的信息，以及这种整合背后的过程如何在儿童早期有所不同。具体来说，该项目将研究低水平的感知线索（例如，面部女性气质）和高水平的概念知识（例如，关于类别的信念）如何塑造儿童如何在他们对他人的表征中整合关于多个类别的信息。调查这些过程是至关重要的，以便建立一个框架，预测在什么年龄不同类型的干预措施预防偏见可能是最有效的。该项目测试了一个假设，即感知线索（例如，面部特征）在塑造年幼的学龄前儿童的分类过程中更有影响力，但关于群体的概念性知识对年龄较大的儿童更有影响力。该项目将用于成人样本的社会认知方法应用于儿童。研究人员将向儿童展示不同性别和种族背景的人脸照片，并要求他们对性别进行分类。这个项目将有助于促进关于儿童如何分析社会世界的理论创新，并通过与社区机构的合作，为研究传播和社区参与创造渠道。该项目还将为不同群体的本科生研究人员提供社会心理学和发展科学方面的培训。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Children divide the world into groups in various ways, including race and gender. The way children represent these groups in their minds often serves as the basis for negative outcomes such as stereotyping and biased behavior. However, the people children interact with do not belong to only one group; they are simultaneously part of multiple groups. This perspective is not often recognized, and even more rarely adopted in prior research. Recognizing and incorporating this perspective in research is important because it illuminates unique forms of bias faced by people who have multiple marginalized identities. This project will investigate how children integrate information about multiple groups and how the processes underlying that integration may differ across early childhood. Specifically, the project will examine how low-level perceptual cues (e.g., facial femininity) and higher-level conceptual knowledge (e.g., beliefs about the category) shape how children integrate information about multiple categories in their representations of others. Investigating these processes is critical in order to develop a framework for predicting at what ages different types of interventions to pre-empt bias might be most effective. The project tests the hypothesis that perceptual cues (e.g., facial features) are more influential in shaping categorization processes for younger, preschool-aged children, but that conceptual knowledge about groups is more influential for older children. The project uses novel adaptations of social-cognitive methods used with adult samples for use with children. Children will be shown pictures of people’s faces that differ in gender and racial background and asked to make a gender categorization. This project will help spur theoretical innovations about how children parse the social world, as well as create pipelines for research dissemination and community involvement via partnerships with community-based institutions. The project will also provide training in social psychology and developmental science for a diverse group of undergraduate researchers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.