Cimpian & Salomon (C&S) present a compelling description of how a fundamental cognitive bias – to explain observed patterns as resulting from the inherent features of the involved entities – underlies an impressive range of cognitive and social phenomena. From a developmental perspective, it is easy to see how such a heuristic might be useful in early conceptual development. By allowing children to expect stability in their environment, the inherence heuristic simplifies children's immense learning challenge. Yet, as discussed by the authors, the inherence heuristic may also have deleterious consequences, particularly when learners use it to explain social phenomena. Here, I consider the implications of the inherence heuristic for the development of social categorization.
Preschool-age children are rampant social categorizers – they readily categorize people based on a wide range of criteria (e.g., gender, race, age, languages, shirt colors, and labels) (Dunham et al. Reference Dunham, Baron and Carey2011; Kinzler et al. Reference Kinzler, Shutts and Correll2010) and use these categories to explain and predict social behavior (Diesendruck & HaLevi Reference Diesendruck and HaLevi2006; Gelman et al. Reference Gelman, Collman and Maccoby1986; Taylor et al. Reference Taylor, Rhodes and Gelman2009; Waxman Reference Waxman2010). Prior research on the development of social categorization has examined a component of children's social categories that closely resembles – and indeed may reflect – the inherence heuristic: a belief that certain categories reflect the objective natural structure of the world. This view of social categories suggests that certain categories reflect the inherent features of their members (e.g., that boys and girls are categorized separately because they are inherently different from one another).
Of all the possible ways that people can be categorized, children appear to adopt this inherence-based view to explain an important subset of social categories. Illustrating this component of children's categories, Rhodes and Gelman (Reference Rhodes and Gelman2009) asked children to consider whether a pairing composed of a boy and a girl, for example, could be considered the “same kind of person.” Even though children could readily bring to mind many similarities between the individuals – shared age, race, facial expressions, and so on – they overwhelmingly rejected these categories. Children in this study viewed the decision to classify people by gender as reflecting an underlying natural reality (the inherent nature of the categorized entities) instead of as the consequence of social histories, personal choices, or convention. Thus, children took an inherence-based view of the structure of social categories.
Whether a particular social category elicits these inherence-based beliefs varies across development and cultural contexts. In the article by Rhodes and Gelman (Reference Rhodes and Gelman2009), for example, young children viewed gender categories, but not racial categories, as reflecting an objective natural reality. In this work, older children's beliefs varied by cultural context; older children growing up in an ethnically diverse and liberal community did not view either gender or race in these terms, whereas older children growing up in an ethnically homogeneous and conservative environment viewed both categories in this manner. Further, Diesendruck and colleagues (Reference Diesendruck, Goldfein-Elbaz, Rhodes, Gelman and Neumark2013) found that the belief that religious groups reflect objective categories developed earlier among children growing up in Israel than in the United States. These patterns suggest that some form of culturally embedded learning influences whether and when in development children rely on the inherence heuristic to explain the social groupings they encounter (Rhodes et al. Reference Rhodes, Leslie and Tworek2012).
Thinking of categories as marking people who are inherently different from one another has long been theorized to contribute to prejudice (Allport Reference Allport1954). Indeed, recent research in my lab has found that as preschool-age children learn about new social groups, those who develop the belief that the categories mark people who are inherently different from one another develop more negative attitudes about the group (Rhodes & Leslie, in preparation). Another possible consequence of taking an inherence-based view of social categories is a tendency to view category-based behaviors as inevitable and consistent with prescriptive norms. By at least age 3, children have robust expectations that social categories shape their members' social interactions; in particular, children predict that harmful interactions will occur more often between members of different categories than among members of the same group (Rhodes Reference Rhodes2012). Children's explanations suggest that they take an inherence-based approach to these patterns – preschool-age children explain instances of intergroup harm by referencing stable category memberships but intragroup harm by referencing more transient situational factors (Rhodes Reference Rhodes2014). Further, children appear to view patterns of intergroup harm as consistent with prescriptive norms – they view intragroup harm as necessarily prohibited, but view the permissibility of intergroup harm as dependent on the external context (Rhodes & Chalik Reference Rhodes and Chalik2013).
Thus, inherence-based thinking appears to contribute to two key negative consequences of social categorization – social prejudice and the cognitive processes that underlie intergroup conflict. Understanding how the inherence heuristic develops, therefore, should provide useful guidance as to how these phenomena could be prevented or undone. C&S note that inherence-based views can be undone if people encounter evidence inconsistent with these beliefs. Yet, prompting people to overturn social beliefs in the face of new evidence is notoriously challenging. Given that young children adopt an inherence-based view of only a subset of possible social categories – with the particular categories in this set varying across cultures – a more promising approach might be to identify the process that leads children to apply these beliefs to particular categories in the first place. This proposal highlights the importance of the early childhood years – when inherence-based thinking and social categorization are emerging – as an important potential time for intervention. Understanding more about why certain patterns trigger inherence-based thinking, or the features of children's experiences that lead them to rely on these beliefs more for some categories than others, could provide new insight into how to approach these intractable social problems.
Cimpian & Salomon (C&S) present a compelling description of how a fundamental cognitive bias – to explain observed patterns as resulting from the inherent features of the involved entities – underlies an impressive range of cognitive and social phenomena. From a developmental perspective, it is easy to see how such a heuristic might be useful in early conceptual development. By allowing children to expect stability in their environment, the inherence heuristic simplifies children's immense learning challenge. Yet, as discussed by the authors, the inherence heuristic may also have deleterious consequences, particularly when learners use it to explain social phenomena. Here, I consider the implications of the inherence heuristic for the development of social categorization.
Preschool-age children are rampant social categorizers – they readily categorize people based on a wide range of criteria (e.g., gender, race, age, languages, shirt colors, and labels) (Dunham et al. Reference Dunham, Baron and Carey2011; Kinzler et al. Reference Kinzler, Shutts and Correll2010) and use these categories to explain and predict social behavior (Diesendruck & HaLevi Reference Diesendruck and HaLevi2006; Gelman et al. Reference Gelman, Collman and Maccoby1986; Taylor et al. Reference Taylor, Rhodes and Gelman2009; Waxman Reference Waxman2010). Prior research on the development of social categorization has examined a component of children's social categories that closely resembles – and indeed may reflect – the inherence heuristic: a belief that certain categories reflect the objective natural structure of the world. This view of social categories suggests that certain categories reflect the inherent features of their members (e.g., that boys and girls are categorized separately because they are inherently different from one another).
Of all the possible ways that people can be categorized, children appear to adopt this inherence-based view to explain an important subset of social categories. Illustrating this component of children's categories, Rhodes and Gelman (Reference Rhodes and Gelman2009) asked children to consider whether a pairing composed of a boy and a girl, for example, could be considered the “same kind of person.” Even though children could readily bring to mind many similarities between the individuals – shared age, race, facial expressions, and so on – they overwhelmingly rejected these categories. Children in this study viewed the decision to classify people by gender as reflecting an underlying natural reality (the inherent nature of the categorized entities) instead of as the consequence of social histories, personal choices, or convention. Thus, children took an inherence-based view of the structure of social categories.
Whether a particular social category elicits these inherence-based beliefs varies across development and cultural contexts. In the article by Rhodes and Gelman (Reference Rhodes and Gelman2009), for example, young children viewed gender categories, but not racial categories, as reflecting an objective natural reality. In this work, older children's beliefs varied by cultural context; older children growing up in an ethnically diverse and liberal community did not view either gender or race in these terms, whereas older children growing up in an ethnically homogeneous and conservative environment viewed both categories in this manner. Further, Diesendruck and colleagues (Reference Diesendruck, Goldfein-Elbaz, Rhodes, Gelman and Neumark2013) found that the belief that religious groups reflect objective categories developed earlier among children growing up in Israel than in the United States. These patterns suggest that some form of culturally embedded learning influences whether and when in development children rely on the inherence heuristic to explain the social groupings they encounter (Rhodes et al. Reference Rhodes, Leslie and Tworek2012).
Thinking of categories as marking people who are inherently different from one another has long been theorized to contribute to prejudice (Allport Reference Allport1954). Indeed, recent research in my lab has found that as preschool-age children learn about new social groups, those who develop the belief that the categories mark people who are inherently different from one another develop more negative attitudes about the group (Rhodes & Leslie, in preparation). Another possible consequence of taking an inherence-based view of social categories is a tendency to view category-based behaviors as inevitable and consistent with prescriptive norms. By at least age 3, children have robust expectations that social categories shape their members' social interactions; in particular, children predict that harmful interactions will occur more often between members of different categories than among members of the same group (Rhodes Reference Rhodes2012). Children's explanations suggest that they take an inherence-based approach to these patterns – preschool-age children explain instances of intergroup harm by referencing stable category memberships but intragroup harm by referencing more transient situational factors (Rhodes Reference Rhodes2014). Further, children appear to view patterns of intergroup harm as consistent with prescriptive norms – they view intragroup harm as necessarily prohibited, but view the permissibility of intergroup harm as dependent on the external context (Rhodes & Chalik Reference Rhodes and Chalik2013).
Thus, inherence-based thinking appears to contribute to two key negative consequences of social categorization – social prejudice and the cognitive processes that underlie intergroup conflict. Understanding how the inherence heuristic develops, therefore, should provide useful guidance as to how these phenomena could be prevented or undone. C&S note that inherence-based views can be undone if people encounter evidence inconsistent with these beliefs. Yet, prompting people to overturn social beliefs in the face of new evidence is notoriously challenging. Given that young children adopt an inherence-based view of only a subset of possible social categories – with the particular categories in this set varying across cultures – a more promising approach might be to identify the process that leads children to apply these beliefs to particular categories in the first place. This proposal highlights the importance of the early childhood years – when inherence-based thinking and social categorization are emerging – as an important potential time for intervention. Understanding more about why certain patterns trigger inherence-based thinking, or the features of children's experiences that lead them to rely on these beliefs more for some categories than others, could provide new insight into how to approach these intractable social problems.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, grant BCS-1226942.