Categorization:

1. Categorization: Social Categories

2. Categorization • Organizes mental representations and guides information processing • Promotes inductive reasoning--going beyond the information given • Social categories add other interesting ingredients

3. Categorization • Organizes mental representations and guides information processing • Promotes inductive reasoning--going beyond the information given • Social categories add other interesting ingredients: Motivation Stereotypes

4. Gender Self-Categorization • Does self-categorization have motivational effects? • Kohlberg: I am a boy/girl, therefore I want to do what boys/girls do

5. Three Stages of Gender Constancy • Gender Identification--labeling, categorization • Gender Stability (over time) • Gender Consistency (across situations, transformations) • Are these stages predictive of gender-role knowledge and sex-typed preferences?

6. Gender Constancy Gender Identity/Labeling: • Pictures of opposite-sex unknown children with child’s picture inserted: Point to the one that is a girl/boy. • Child’s own picture pitted against picture of boy and girl: Point to the picture that is most like you.

7. Gender Constancy • Gender Stability: • When you grow up will you be a mother or father? • This grown-up is a man. When this grown-up was little was this grown-up really a girl like this child or really a boy like this child?

8. Gender Constancy • Gender Consistency: • If you played games that boys usually play, would you then really be a boy or really be a girl? Why? • If you went into the other room and put on clothes like these, would you then really be a girl or really be a boy? • If Jill was very strong and played football…

9. Martin & Little (1990) Children aged 3 to 5.5 Gender Concept Measures: • Gender labeling of others • Own group membership • Gender stability • Gender consistency Several days later given gender knowledge and gender preference tasks.

10. Martin & Little (cont.) Knowledge & Preferences: • Clothing and toy knowledge • Toy preferences • Peer preference (boy vs. girl)

11. Martin & Little: Results Gender labeling of others--> • Clothing knowledge (.23) • Toy preference (.27) Gender membership--> • Clothing knowledge (.33) • Toy preference (.24) • Peer preference (.23) Gender stability--> • Clothing knowledge (.35) • Toy preference (.30) • Toy knowledge (.41) • Peer preference (.27)

12. No child had sex-typed preferences without labeling • Only 1 child had high stereotype knowledge without labeling • In this study, gender consistency did not predict beyond gender stability. Maybe would predict other things: rigidity vs. flexibility (e.g., Trautner, 2005).

13. Fagot & Leinbach (1989) • Observations: 18 & 27 mos. • Gender labeling task every month Pairs of pictures: point to the boy/girl At 27months: 1/2 passed--early labelers (passed 10/12 trials) 1/2 did not pass--late labelers

14. Fagot & Leinbach (cont.) • Observed play at 18 and 27 mos: -Early & late labelers = in sex-typed play at 18 mos. -Only early labelers showed a significant increase in sex-typed behavior from 18 to 27 mos. • Parental differences? Positive and negative reactions to sex-typed toy play.

15. More recent research (Zosuls, Ruble, Tamis-LeMonda, Shrout, Bornstein, & Greulich, 2009) • Gender labels: Mothers kept language diaries of infants from 10-21 months • Filmed play session • Gender labeling incr. in sex-typed play

16. Martin & Halverson (1983)Going Beyond the Information Given Children 5-6 years old Pictures of masculine and feminine activities with consistent or inconsistent actors (boy sawing wood vs. girl sawing wood) • Identify sex of actor • Memory test 1 wk later Do you remember seeing a picture of someone doing___? Do you remember seeing a boy or girl doing___?

17. Martin & Halverson Results • Distortion (sex reversals) during initial presentation: Girl holding hammer identified as boy Boy holding doll identified as girl • Memory distortions of inconsistent pictures during recall Told not to guess; to say “don’t remember” Just as confident when incorrect as when correct • Memory distortions can promote and maintain stereotypes

18. Younger & Fearing (1999)Do Infants Have Gender Categories? Infants 7 & 10 mos. Shown a series of varied male and female faces Did they form 1 category (faces) or 2 categories (male faces & female faces)?

19. Younger & Fearing Stimulus Faces

20. Younger & Fearing (cont.) Tested with • Novel gender-typical male, female faces • Gender-ambiguous male, female faces (see next slide) • Teddy bear Who showed dishabituation and when?

21. Younger & Fearing Test Items

22. Younger & Fearing (cont.) Results: • 7 mos: recovery only to teddy bear • 10 mos: recovery to teddy bear and to gender-ambiguous faces

23. Levy & Haaf (1994)Can infants also go beyond the information given? Infants 10 mos old Habituation stimuli: 3 male and 3 females faces, each paired with object (e.g., hammer, football vs. frying pan, scarf) Test : • Did not recover to female face with diff. “female” object • Did recover to female face w/ “male” object

24. Bigler, Jones, & Lobliner (1997)When Will New Social Categories Become Meaningful?Affect Intergroup Attitudes? • Children 6.2 to 9.8 years • 1/2 yellow t-shirt, 1/2 blue • Classes assigned to conditions: • Biological categories (hair color + t-shirt) + functional use • T-shirt categories (randomly assigned) + functional use • T-shirt categories + no functional use (control cond.) • Func Use: seating arr., sep. bulletin board, lining up, etc. 4 wks later, perceptions & attitudes assessed

25. Bigler, Jones, & Lobliner (cont.)Results Children in experimental vs. control conds: • Perceived the two color groups to be more different • Made more extreme ratings of negative traits for outgroup and positive traits for ingroup Conclusion: Functional use communicates that an attribute is important for understanding people and their behavior

26. Are there alternatives to categories for organizing differences among people? Master, Markman, & Dweck, in press.

27. Categories vs. Continua

28. Two practice sets • Test set

29. Similarity: “Choose two more like this one.”

30. Test set

31. Inferences about Behavior and Deservingness Inferences about behavior • “Would this one share? A little/kind of/a lot?” • “Would this one hit? A little/kind of/a lot?” Inferences about deservingness • “Should this one get 0, 1, 2, or 3 presents?”

32. Share/Hit Inferences * * - - *p < .05 Interaction: p < .05 -

33. Inferences about deservingness - - -

34. Attitudes: “Do you like this one? A little/kind of/a lot?” “Would you like to play with this one? A little/kind of/a lot?”

35. AttitudesLike & Play combined

36. Conclusions Children form social categories early Categories have informational and motivation value, leading children to go beyond the info given Alternatives to categories can minimize some of the undesirable effects of categories

38. Bradbard, Martin, Endsley, & Halverson (1986): Motivation • Children 71.8 mos. Younger group 56.9 Older group 87.9 • Three boxes, each with a set of 3 novel objects (e.g., pizza cutter, hole puncher, shoe stretcher). Boxes labeled: “Girls,” “Boys,” or “Boys and Girls” Items described • How much did they play with each? • 1-wk later, how much did they remember? • Did incentive increase recall for other-sex items?

39. Bradbard, Martin, Endsley, & Halverson Results Amount of visual exploration/touching: • Younger group: no difference (perhaps need real life obs.) • Older group: Same sex> Both> Other Sex: more sustained visual attention & more contact Recall: • More in-depth information for Same sex> Both, Other Incentives (shown treasure chest and could pick one): • No effect on memory for other-sex objects

40. Novel Toy Preference • Pizza cutter, metal telephone directory, garlic press, shoe stretcher, hole puncher • One at a time, randomly labeled as something girls really like or boys really like • Rate with faces how much they would like to play with each toy