Work

Do young American children essentialize ethnicity? Examining inductive inferences about Hispanic/Latinx individuals in an ethnically diverse sample

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Hispanic and Latinx individuals represent one of the largest and fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States. Yet research has not investigated whether young children hold essentialist beliefs about this prevalent social category. The present study addressed this issue by examining whether children used this ethnic category to make inductive inferences about novel individuals, one dimension of essentialism. A total of 108 children, 5 to 7 years of age (54 female; 56 Hispanic, 46 non‐Hispanic), completed a forced‐choice inference task. Children did not expect members of the same ethnic group to share properties, and this did not vary with their own ethnic group membership. This suggests that in the US, the belief that ethnicity is causally informative undergoes a protracted developmental trajectory, as has been observed for essentialist beliefs about race.

Source: Social Development

DOI: 10.1111/sode.12775

Authors: Megan A. Pronovost, Rose M. Scott

Institutions: California State University, Fresno, University of California, Merced

Language: English

Topic: Social and Intergroup Psychology

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Science Foundation

Award: Collaborative Research: Trust across diverse contexts in early childhood