Social categorization and the formation of group stereotypes: Further evidence for biased information processing in the perception of group-behavior correlations

An experiment tested the hypothesis that the mere categorization of people into social groups spontaneously instigates a mechanism through which group-relevant information is perceived and processed in a biased manner. This in turn may result in the erroneous perception of correlation between group and behavior. Subjects were initially assigned to be members of a minority group, a majority group, or were not assigned to a group. They were then presented with a series of statements that described members of the two groups performing either desirable or undesirable behaviors. Results showed that unaffiliated subjects perceived an illusory group-behavior correlation, indicating the operation of a cognitive bias to associate the minority group with distinctive behaviors. Subjects who were themselves members of the observed groups perceived illusory correlations that favored their own group, indicating a very different sort of bias. The results suggest that a categorization-based ingroup favoritism guided the manner in which group information was processed. These data lend support to the contention that social categorization spontaneously instigates specific cognitive mechanisms that contribute to group stereotype formation.     

Does a Positive Bias Relate to Social Behavior in Children With ADHD?

This study examines whether positively biased self-perceptions relate to social behaviors in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as compared to control children. The social behaviors of children with ADHD (n = 87) were examined relative to control children (CTL; n = 38) during a laboratory-based dyadic social interaction task. Children with ADHD were subgrouped into those with a positive illusory bias (PIB) in their self-perceptions (ADHD + PIB) versus those without such a bias (ADHD – PIB). Using a behavioral coding system adapted for this study, ADHD + PIB, ADHD – PIB, and CTL participants were compared on objectively coded social behaviors occurring within the context of the social interaction task. Whereas both ADHD groups displayed more disruptive behavior than controls, only the ADHD + PIB group displayed less prosocial behavior and less effortful behavior. This study breaks new ground by examining positively biased self-perceptions as they relate to social behavior in children with ADHD and provides promising new insight into the social problems experienced by these children.     

Children's Illusory Correlations: The Role of Attentional Bias in Group Impression Formation

Two experiments examined 2nd and 5th graders' tendency to perceive illusory correlations between a minority group and infrequent behaviors. Experiment 1 examined perceptions of fictitious majority and minority groups in which 67% of each group's behaviors were positive and 33% were negative. Second and 5th graders formed illusory correlations between the minority group and negative behaviors on group attribution and frequency estimation tasks, and frequency estimations predicted differential evaluations of the majority and minority groups. Experiment 2 replicated findings from Experiment 1 under conditions in which 67% of the target groups' behaviors were negative and 33% were positive. In this case, children perceived an illusory correlation between the minority group and positive behaviors, and frequency estimations again predicted differential group evaluations. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding judgment biases and stereotype formation and for stereotyping and prejudice interventions.     

Representing ‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Building Blocks of Intergroup Cognition

Three experiments explored whether group membership affects the acquisition of richer information about social groups. Employing a minimal-groups paradigm, 6- to 8-year-olds were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 novel social groups. Experiment 1 demonstrated that immediately following random assignment to a novel group, children were more likely to generalize negative behaviors to outgroup members and positive behaviors to ingroup members and to report a preference for ingroup members. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this initial ingroup-favoring bias interacts with subsequent learning, thereby attenuating the effect of negative information about the ingroup and enhancing the effect of negative information about the outgroup. These effects were more powerful with respect to preferences than induction: After hearing that some ingroup members behaved badly, children predicted that ingroup members would behave more negatively than outgroup members, but they did not express preferences for the outgroup over the ingroup. Together these data shed light on the construction of social category knowledge as well as the processes underlying the absence of own-group positivity among children from lower-status social groups.     

Affect and stereotyping: the effect of induced mood on distinctiveness-based illusory correlations.

In 2 studies, the effects of mood on the formation of distinctiveness-based illusory correlations were examined. After exposure to stimuli inducing positive, neutral, or negative mood, Ss read information about behaviors performed by members of 2 groups in an illusory correlation paradigm. In both experiments, only Ss in a neutral mood formed illusory correlations. In addition, Experiment 2 assessed Ss' processing latencies as a means of investigating differential attention to distinctive behaviors. Only Ss in a neutral mood differentially attended to the minority group's infrequent behaviors. Induced mood apparently interfered with the processing necessary to differentially encode distinctive stimuli, undermining the illusory correlation effect.     

How Do Opportunities to View Objects Together in Time Influence Children's Memory for Location?

We conducted three experiments to investigate how opportunities to view objects together in time influence memory for location. Children and adults learned the locations of 20 objects marked by dots on the floor of an open, square box. During learning, participants viewed the objects either simultaneously or in isolation. At test, participants replaced the objects without the aid of the dots. Experiment 1 showed that when the box was divided into quadrants and the objects in each quadrant were categorically related, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and adults in the simultaneous viewing condition exhibited categorical bias, but only 11-year-olds and adults in the isolated viewing condition exhibited categorical bias. Experiment 2 showed that when the objects were categorically related but no boundaries were present, 11-year-olds and adults in the simultaneous viewing condition exhibited categorical bias, but only adults showed bias in the isolated viewing condition. Experiment 3 revealed that adults exhibited bias in both simultaneous and isolated viewing conditions when boundaries were present but the objects were not related. These findings suggest that opportunities to see objects together in time interact with cues available for grouping objects to help children form spatial groups.     

One-shot illusory correlations and stereotype formation

In four studies, the authors explored the emergence of one-shot illusory correlations--in which a single instance of unusual behavior by a member of a rare group is sufficient to create an association between group and behavior. In Studies 1, 2, and 3, unusual behaviors committed by members of rare groups were processed differently than other types of behaviors. They received more processing time, prompted more attributional thinking, and were more memorable. In Study 4, the authors obtained evidence from two implicit measures of association that one-shot illusory correlations are generalized to other members of a rare group. The authors contend that one-shot illusory correlations arise because unusual pairings of behaviors and groups uniquely prompt people to entertain group membership as an explanation of the unusual behavior.     

Scientific Communication and Stereotype Change1

The aim of this experiment is to examine whether communicating the results of social psychological research improves out‐group stereotypes and diminishes in‐group bias. The experimental material consisted of 2 communications: one described Hamilton and Gifford's (1976) experiment on illusory correlation (Experiment 1); the other described Sherif's (1966) studies on summer camps. The results of the present experiment show that knowledge of Sherif's findings had no effect on evaluations, whereas an awareness of the experiment on illusory correlation produced a boomerang effect, accentuating, rather than diminishing, in‐group bias. A second experiment revealed that the persuasive power of a scientific message on stereotypes depends on whether in‐groups and out‐groups are cogni‐tively present in the message acquisition phase.     

Minimal‐group membership influences children's responses to novel experience with group members

Children, like adults, tend to prefer ingroup over outgroup individuals, but how this group bias affects children's processing of information about social groups is not well understood. In this study, 5‐ and 6‐year‐old children were assigned to artificial groups. They observed instances of ingroup and outgroup members behaving in either a positive (egalitarian) or a negative (stingy) manner. Observations of positive ingroup and negative outgroup behaviors reliably reduced children's liking of novel outgroup members, while observations of negative ingroup and positive outgroup behaviors had little effect on liking ratings. In addition, children successfully identified the more generous group only when the ingroup was egalitarian and the outgroup stingy. These data provide compelling evidence that children treat knowledge of and experiences with ingroups and outgroups differently, and thereby differently interpret identical observations of ingroup versus outgroup members.     

Children's implicit attitude acquisition: Evaluative statements succeed,repeated pairings fail

From the earliest ages tested, children and adults show similar overall magnitudes of implicit attitudes toward various social groups. However, such consistency in attitude magnitude may obscure meaningful age‐related change in the ways that children (vs. adults) acquire implicit attitudes. This experiment investigated children's implicit attitude acquisition by comparing the separate and joint effects of two learning interventions, previously shown to form implicit attitudes in adults. Children (N = 280, ages 7–11 years) were taught about novel social groups through either evaluative statements (ES; auditorily presented verbal statements such as ‘Longfaces are bad, Squarefaces are good’), repeated evaluative pairings (REP; visual pairings of Longface/Squareface group members with valenced images such as a puppy or snake), or a combination of ES+REP. Results showed that children acquired implicit attitudes following ES and ES+REP, with REP providing no additional learning beyond ES alone. Moreover, children did not acquire implicit attitudes in four variations of REP, each designed to facilitate learning by systematically increasing verbal scaffolding to specify (a) the learning goal, (b) the valence of the unconditioned stimuli, and (c) the group categories of the conditioned stimuli. These findings underscore the early‐emerging role of verbal statements in children's implicit attitude acquisition, as well as a possible age‐related limit in children's acquisition of novel implicit attitudes from repeated pairings.     

The effects of early foster care intervention on attention biases in previously institutionalized children in Romania

Children raised in institutions experience psychosocial deprivation that can negatively impact attention skills and emotion regulation, which subsequently may influence behavioral regulation and social relationships. The current study examined visual attention biases in 8‐year‐old children who were part of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP). Relations among attention biases and concurrent social outcomes were also investigated. In early childhood, 136 children abandoned at birth or shortly thereafter into institutional care were randomized to receive a high‐quality foster care intervention or care‐as‐usual within the context of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP). At 8 years of age, 50 care‐as‐usual, 55 foster care, and 52 community controls performed a behavioral dot‐probe task, and indices of attention biases to threat and positive stimuli were calculated. Concurrent data on social behavior were collected. Children placed into the foster care intervention had a significant attention bias toward positive stimuli, while children who received care‐as‐usual had a significant bias toward threat. Children in the foster care intervention had a significantly larger positive bias when compared to the care‐as‐usual group. A positive bias was related to more social engagement, more prosocial behavior, less externalizing disorders, and less emotionally withdrawn behavior. The magnitude of positive bias was predicted by age of placement into foster care among children with a history of institutionalization. An attention bias towards positive stimuli was associated with reduced risk for behavioral problems amongst children who experienced early psychosocial deprivation. Research assessing attention biases in children experiencing early environmental stress may refine our understanding of the mechanisms underlying risk for later psychiatric and social disorders and inform prevention efforts.     

Children's Perception of Gender-Based Illusory Correlations: Enhancing Preexisting Relationships Between Gender and Behavior

The purpose of this study was to examine whether children would perceive an illusory correlation between gender and behavior above and beyond the actual relationship between the variables in the stimuli. Second and fourth grade children were presented with a series of pictures of men and women performing gender stereotypic, counter-stereotypic, and neutral behaviors. One gender (the high frequency gender) performed each behavior twice as often as the other gender. The children made higher frequency estimates for stimuli that matched their expectancies than for stimuli that were neutral or counter to their expectations. Further, they perceived a stronger relationship between gender and behavior for stimuli that were stereotypic for the high frequency gender than for neutral or counter-stereotypic stimuli.     

My people,right or wrong? Minimal group membership disrupts preschoolers’ selective trust

When preschoolers decide to trust one speaker over another, how does group membership influence their tracking of speaker reliability? In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds were assigned to arbitrary groups of no social significance (0055 and 0170) and asked to endorse novel object labels provided by two ingroup members, one of whom was reliable and the second of whom was unreliable. Children selectively trusted the more reliable informant. In Experiment 2, we asked whether ingroup status or reliability would determine children's choices and found that 4-year-olds failed to trust reliable outgroup members over unreliable ingroup members (or vice versa). Experiment 3 showed that the failure of trust in Experiment 2 was not due to the mere inclusion of both ingroup and outgroup members: children presented with a control paradigm in which the ingroup members were reliable trusted reliable ingroup members over unreliable outgroup members. Children's use of reliability as an indicator of future credibility therefore appears disrupted when outgroup status and reliability are in conflict, even when group membership is arbitrary.     

Social class differences produce social group preferences

Some social groups are higher in socioeconomic status than others and the former tend to be favored over the latter. The present research investigated whether observing group differences in wealth alone can directly cause children to prefer wealthier groups. In Experiment 1, 4–5‐year‐old children developed a preference for a wealthy novel group over a less wealthy group. In Experiment 2, children did not develop preferences when groups differed by another kind of positive/negative attribute (i.e. living in brightly colored houses vs. drab houses), suggesting that wealth is a particularly meaningful group distinction. Lastly, in Experiment 3, the effect of favoring novel wealthy groups was moderated by group membership: Children assigned to a wealthy group showed ingroup favoritism, but those assigned to a less wealthy group did not. These experiments shed light on why children tend to be biased in favor of social groups that are higher in socioeconomic status.     

Infants’ perception of curved illusory contour with motion

Recently, Masuda et al. (submitted for publication) showed that adults perceive moving rigid or nonrigid motion from illusory contour with neon color spreading in which the inducer has pendular motion with or without phase difference. In Experiment 1, we used the preferential looking method to investigate whether 3–8-month-old infants can discriminate illusory and non-illusory contour figures, and found that the 7–8-month-old, but not the 3–6-month-old, infants showed significant preference for illusory contour with phase difference. In Experiment 2, we tested the validity of the visual stimuli in the present study, and whether infants could detect illusory contour from the current neon color spreading figures. The results showed that all infants might detect illusory contour figure with neon color spreading figures. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that 7–8-month-old infants potentially perceive illusory contour from the visual stimulus with phase-different movement of inducers, which elicits the perception of nonrigid dynamic subjective contour in adults.     

Children's Responses to Group-Based Inequalities: Perpetuation and Rectification

The current studies investigate whether, and under what conditions, children engage in system-perpetuating and system-attenuating behaviors when allocating resources to different social groups. In three studies, we presented young children with evidence of social group inequalities and assessed whether they chose to perpetuate or rectify these inequalities. Children (aged 3.5-11.5 years) heard about two social groups (i.e., racial or novel groups) whose members received resources unequally(two cookies versus one). Participants were then given the opportunity to distribute additional resources to new members of the same groups. In Experiment 1, when children were presented with inequalities involving groups of Blacks and Whites, older children (aged 7.5-11.5 years) rejected the status quo, providing more resources to members of groups with fewer resources (White or Black), whereas younger children (aged 3.5-7.5 years) perpetuated the status quo. In Experiments 2 and 3, the inequalities involved Asians and Whites and novel groups. Children of all ages perpetuated inequality, with rectification strategies applied only by older children and only when Black targets were involved in the inequality. Equal sharing occasionally occurred in older children but was never a common response. These findings provide evidence that system-perpetuating tendencies may be predominant in children and suggest that socialization may be necessary to counter them.     

aPRIDIT Unsupervised Classification with Asymmetric Valuation of Variable Discriminatory Worth

Abstract

Sometimes one needs to classify individuals into groups, but there is no available grouping information due to social desirability bias in reporting behavior like unethical or dishonest intentions or unlawful actions. Assessing hard-to-detect behaviors is useful; however it is methodologically difficult because people are unlikely to self-disclose bad actions. This paper presents an unsupervised classification methodology utilizing ordinal categorical predictor variables. It allows for classification, individual respondent ranking, and grouping without access to a dependent group indicator variable. The methodology also measures predictor variable worth (for determining target behavior group membership) at a predictor variable category-by-category level, so different variable response categories can contain different amounts of information about classification. It is asymmetric in that a “0” on a binary predictor does not have a similar impact toward signaling “membership in the target group” as a “1” has for signaling “membership in the non-target group.” The methodology is illustrated by identifying Spanish consumers filing fraudulent insurance claims. A second illustration classifies Portuguese high school student’s propensity to alcohol abuse. Results show the methodology is useful when it is difficult to get dependent variable information, and is useful for deciding which predictor variables and categorical response options are most important.     

Developmental changes in the processing of hierarchical shapes continue into adolescence

The present study was designed to trace the normal development of local and global processing of hierarchical visual forms. We presented pairs of hierarchical shapes to children and adults and asked them to indicate whether the two shapes were the same or different at either the global or the local level. In Experiments 1 (6-year-olds, 10-year-olds, adults) and 2 (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, adults), we presented stimuli centrally. All age groups responded faster on global trials than local trials (global precedence effect), but the bias was stronger in children and diminished to the adult level between 10 and 14 years of age. In Experiment 3 (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, adults), we presented stimuli in the left or right visual field so that they were transmitted first to the contralateral hemisphere. All age groups responded faster on local trials when stimuli were presented in the right visual field (left hemisphere); reaction times on global trials were independent of visual field. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that by 10 years of age the hemispheres have adult-like specialization for the processing of hierarchical shapes, at least when attention is directed to the global versus local level. Nevertheless, their greater bias in Experiments 1 and 2 suggests that 10-year-olds are less able than adults to modulate attention to the output from local versus global channels-perhaps because they are less able to ignore distractors and perhaps because the cerebral hemispheres are less able to engage in parallel processing.     

内群体偏爱与儿童基于贡献的分配公平性:心理理论的调节作用

本研究考察了贡献和内群体偏爱两种分配动机对儿童分配公平性的影响,并探讨了心理理论在其中的作用。通过比较63名6~8岁儿童在不同群体条件下对贡献不同的接受者的分配结果和分配策略的差异,结果发现：（1）在所有群体条件下,儿童都会分配给贡献多的接受者更多的资源,但当外群体成员贡献多且内群体成员贡献少时,儿童也会分配给贡献多的接受者相比于其他群体条件更少的资源,并更多的采用群体关系策略对这一行为作出解释;（2）心理理论能力越高的儿童分配给贡献多的接受者的资源数量受群体关系的影响越小,且使用贡献策略的频率越高,使用群体关系策略的频率越低。这些结果表明6~8岁儿童在资源分配过程中会优先考虑公平动机,且心理理论能力强的儿童更少表现出内群体偏爱。     

Perceiving arousal and valence in facial expressions: Differences between children and adults

Arousal and valence have long been studied as the two primary dimensions for the perception of emotional stimuli such as facial expressions. Prior correlational studies that tested emotion perception along these dimensions found broad similarities between adults and children. However, few studies looked for direct differences between children and adults in these dimensions beyond correlation. We tested 9-year-old children and adults on rating positive and negative facial stimuli based on emotional arousal and valence. Despite high significant correlations between children’s and adults’ ratings, our findings also showed significant differences between children and adults in terms of rating values: Children rated all expressions as significantly more positive than adults in valence. Children also rated positive emotions as more arousing than adults. Our results show that although perception of facial emotions along arousal and valence follows similar patterns in children and adults, some differences in ratings persist, and vary by emotion type.