Consistent but not diagnostic: Preschoolers' intuitions about shared preferences within social groups

Natalia Vélez, Yuerui Wu, Hyowon Gweon

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Social groups highlight latent structure in the social world and support inductive inferences about individuals. In the present work, we examined children and adults' intuitions about shared preferences within social groups. In Exp.1, 3- to 5-year-old children treated preferences as a consistent property of social groups; that is, children expected members of a social group to like the same toys that other members have liked. However, they did not treat preferences as diagnostic of social groups; they did not expect individuals to belong to a group that shares their preferences. By contrast, in Exp.2, adults readily treated preferences as both a consistent and diagnostic property of social groups. These results suggest that children's inferences about social groups are asymmetric: Children readily infer preferences based on group membership, but not group membership based on preferences.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages2621-2626
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780991196784
StatePublished - 2018
Externally publishedYes
Event40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Changing Minds, CogSci 2018 - Madison, United States
Duration: Jul 25 2018Jul 28 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018

Conference

Conference40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Changing Minds, CogSci 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMadison
Period7/25/187/28/18

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

Keywords

  • social categories
  • social cognitive development

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