TY - JOUR
T1 - How Culture Shapes Social Categorization and Inductive Reasoning:A Developmental Comparison between the United States and China
AU - Xu, Yian
AU - Burns, Megan
AU - Wen, Fangfang
AU - Thor, Emily Dahlgaard
AU - Zuo, Bin
AU - Coley, John D.
AU - Rhodes, Marjorie
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the James S. McDonnell Foundation under Grant (#24-91551-WSQPG-R4993) and the National Social Science Foundation of China under Grant (#18ZDA331) and Grant (#20FSHB003). Yian Xu was supported by the John Templeton Foundation with a postdoctoral subaward (#S-001392) through the Developing Belief Network Project. We are grateful of CCNU Affiliated Kindergarten and Princeton & NYU Discoveries in Action Lab for hosting this research, and all children, families, and undergraduate students for their participation. We thank Kristhy Bartels for drawing the stimuli and Cecilia Shi for coding the online study videos. We thank Zoe Lolis, Nicole Pochinki, Mellisa Morgan, Alyson Lowitz, Estefany Ramos-Parada, and Lujane Barakat from the Northeastern CORE lab, Daryl Ocampo, Jonah Brenner, and Amanda Cardarelli from the NYU CDSC Lab, and the research assistants at the Center for Studies of Social Psychology at CCNU for their generous support during the data collection.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Social categories allow us to make sense of the social world and generate predictions about novel encounters. Yet, how people use particular social categories varies by culture. The current study examined how social categorization varies across traditionally individualistic and collectivistic societies among young children and adults. Using a triad picture task, American and Chinese children and adults made categorization and inductive reasoning judgments based on categories perceived as biological (e.g., age and gender) or categories perceived as social (e.g., occupation). The developmental trajectory of social categorization varied by culture: American adults were more likely than American children to categorize based on biologically-relevant categories, whereas Chinese adults were more likely than Chinese children to do so based on socially-relevant categories. Chinese participants also relied on socially-relevant categories (occupation) to make predictions about physical properties more than American participants. The current findings suggest a broad cultural influence on the perceived meanings and structures of certain biologically- and socially-based categories.
AB - Social categories allow us to make sense of the social world and generate predictions about novel encounters. Yet, how people use particular social categories varies by culture. The current study examined how social categorization varies across traditionally individualistic and collectivistic societies among young children and adults. Using a triad picture task, American and Chinese children and adults made categorization and inductive reasoning judgments based on categories perceived as biological (e.g., age and gender) or categories perceived as social (e.g., occupation). The developmental trajectory of social categorization varied by culture: American adults were more likely than American children to categorize based on biologically-relevant categories, whereas Chinese adults were more likely than Chinese children to do so based on socially-relevant categories. Chinese participants also relied on socially-relevant categories (occupation) to make predictions about physical properties more than American participants. The current findings suggest a broad cultural influence on the perceived meanings and structures of certain biologically- and socially-based categories.
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U2 - 10.1080/15248372.2022.2085708
DO - 10.1080/15248372.2022.2085708
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85132713400
SN - 1524-8372
VL - 23
SP - 644
EP - 659
JO - Journal of Cognition and Development
JF - Journal of Cognition and Development
IS - 5
ER -