RUI: Mechanisms Underlying the Development of Social Categorization

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。儿童以各种方式将世界划分为不同的群体，包括种族和性别。儿童在脑海中代表这些群体的方式往往是造成负面结果的基础，例如刻板印象和偏见行为。然而，与儿童互动的人不仅仅属于一个群体；他们同时也是多个群体的一部分。这一观点并不经常被认可，在以前的研究中更是很少被采用。认识到这一观点并将其纳入研究是重要的，因为它揭示了具有多种边缘化身份的人所面临的独特形式的偏见。这个项目将调查儿童如何整合关于多个群体的信息，以及这种整合的基础过程在儿童早期可能会有什么不同。具体地说，该项目将考察低水平的知觉线索(如面部女性气质)和高水平的概念性知识(如对类别的信念)如何影响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。研究这些过程是至关重要的，以便建立一个框架，预测不同类型的干预措施在什么年龄段可能是最有效的，以预防偏见。该项目测试了一种假设，即感知线索(例如，面部特征)在塑造较小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较大的儿童更有影响。该项目对成人样本使用的社会认知方法进行了新颖的改编，供儿童使用。孩子们将被展示不同性别和种族背景的人脸图片，并被要求对性别进行分类。该项目将帮助推动有关儿童如何分析社会世界的理论创新，并通过与社区机构的伙伴关系创建研究传播和社区参与的渠道。该项目还将为不同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NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.