GENERALIZING GROUP PREFERENCES: HOW DO PRESCHOOLERS USE STATISTICAL INFORMATION TO REASON ABOUT THE SOCIAL WORLD?

Abstract

Humans are not born with knowledge of the social world. As children learn about and interact with new people, objects, events, and communities, they develop knowledge upon which they can build assumptions and use as inferences when faced with new groups. While this can help children build their understanding of the social world and guide interactions with others, making inferences based on group membership and previous knowledge could also contribute to the formation of stereotypes and biases. Through two studies, we wanted to understand how children generalize information about groups and whether they can do so appropriately. Here we show that group size and composition do affect children’s inferences about novel social groups. Children pooled observations across different groups when making inferences, and they continued to do so, unexpectedly, when one group was smaller than the other and contributed less information to social reasoning. Our work demonstrates empirical evidence that minimal statistical information impacts children’s overhypotheses, providing insight to how people generalize preferences both within and across different groups. Because we studied how children draw on information to make informed inferences about the social world, our work also intersects with cognitive science, which aims to understand how mental abilities and processes can ground thought and decision.