Museum of Science, Boston

Reasoning about Social Situations

Learning to navigate social situations is an important part of growing up. Some cognitive scientists study children in order to develop a better sense of how children perceive other people and how this might affect their social interactions.

Social Groups

How do children learn stereotypes about groups of people?

This study asked: are stereotypes learned, or an inevitable consequence of the way our minds are wired? The study explored the conditions that affect children’s formation of stereotypes and their opinions about social groups.

Children 3-8 years old heard a story about two groups of people, called the Zips and the Zaps, or the Orange group and the Green group (represented with cartoon images). In each story, members of each group engaged in either positive or negative behaviors (e.g., practicing good manners vs. cheating). Children were then asked to make judgments about whether new members from each group will perform similar or different behaviors in the future. Children participated in one of two conditions.

In some versions of the study, characters in the stories were given general labels, like “the Zip,” or individual names like “John.” In this condition, we hoped to find out whether the labels used for the characters affected children's expectations of new members of both groups.

The data thus far indicate that children stereotype more when the characters are labeled with general group labels (i.e., “the Zip”) rather than individual labels (i.e., “John”). This means that the very language we use to refer to a person affects whether children develop stereotypes. This research will help us better understand how the language that parents and other adults use can affect children’s perceptions about social groups.

In other versions of the study, children were randomly assigned to be a member of one of the two groups. This condition helped us determine whether being a member of one group affects children’s judgments about the behaviors of both groups (e.g., judging a member of their own group more favorably).

Children in this version of the study often showed preferences for members of their group. For example, they reported liking members of their own group better than members of other groups, and they also said that they would prefer to play with other members of their group. They also said that they would share more with their group members and would expect them to share more in return. These studies showed that children are very sensitive to being included in a group and show positive feelings toward other people who are similar to themselves.


Other Resources

View a video of Andy Scott Baron discussing this research on New England News Channel.

Learn about other research related to Reasoning about Social Situations.

This research is conducted by the Social Psychology Laboratory at Harvard University

Try it at the Museum

Corn Snake Behavior

Help your child observe the behavior of our Corn Snakes. Find one snake and watch how it moves and what it does. Where does it like to hang out in the enclosure? Does it seem to notice you? Ask your child to guess how the other corn snake in the enclosure might behave, and then test out your predictions by finding it and making some new observations!

Are your child’s predictions based on his/her prior observations of one corn snake, or tailored to the behavior of individual snakes? If one snake is observed curled up in a plant, does your child think all snakes will behave this way?

Try it at Home

Social Group Stories

Find a storybook that features characters of more than one kind, like The Sneetches. Use the storybook to talk with your child about stereotypes by creating little stories about what the sneetches are doing in the pictures. What happens if you give names to the individual characters, instead of calling them by their group names (e.g. using ‘Harry’ instead of ‘the star-bellied sneetch’)? If ‘star-bellied sneetches’ behaves badly at the beginning of your story, does your child expect that all ‘star-bellied sneetches’ behave that way?