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Within “mainstream” developmental science, gender researchers largely study the developmental trajectory of children considered to be “gender typical,” while research housed primarily in psychiatry and clinical psychology often documents the trajectories of gender diverse children. This article aims to bridge the studies of gender diversity and “mainstream” gender development. First, we review literature on the development of four commonly studied subgroups of gender diverse children—children referred to medical clinics because of their gender identity and expression, transgender children, female children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and tomboys—highlighting how these gender trajectories do or do not align with modal developmental patterns. We then describe social, cognitive, and biological determinants of gender in light of their implications for understanding diverse gender development. Finally, we note methodological suggestions for future research, with an eye toward better integrating research on gender diversity into “mainstream” gender development research.

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) children and adolescents are an increasingly visible yet highly stigmatized group. These youth experience more psychological distress than not only their cisgender, heterosexual peers but also their cisgender, sexual minority peers. In this review, we document these mental health disparities and discuss potential explanations for them using a minority stress framework. We also discuss factors that may increase and decrease TGD youth's vulnerability to psychological distress. Further, we review interventions, including gender-affirming medical care, that may improve mental health in TGD youth. We conclude by discussing limitations of current research and suggestions for the future. Expected final online publication date for the

Epidemiological studies suggest that more youth are identifying as gender expansive (e.g., transgender, gender nonconforming) than ever before. However, due to stressors like discrimination, gender...

Although increasing numbers of children have socially transitioned to live in line with their gender identities, little is known about factors associated with their wellbeing. This study examines the associations between parent-reported family, peer, and school support for a youth’s gender identity, as well as an objective measure of state-level support, with parent-reported internalizing symptoms in 265 transgender youth (67.2% transgender girls, 32.8% transgender boys), ages 3–15 years (M = 9.41, SD = 2.62). Parents who reported higher levels of family, peer, and school support for their child’s gender identity also reported fewer internalizing symptoms; the objective measure of state-level support was not related to internalizing symptoms. Additionally, peer and school support buffered against the association between gender-related victimization and internalizing symptoms, as reported by parents. This work demonstrates that even among transgender youth with families who supported their transitions, parents see better well-being in their children when they also see more support for the child’s gender identity from family, peers, and schools.

Evidence of group bias based on race, ethnicity, nationality, and language emerges early in the life span. Although understanding the initial acquisition of group bias has critical theoretical and practical implications, precisely how group biases are acquired has been understudied. In two preregistered experiments, we tested the hypothesis that generalized social group biases can be acquired through exposure to positive nonverbal signals directed toward a novel adult from one group and more negative nonverbal signals directed toward a novel adult from another group. We sought to determine whether children would acquire global nonverbal signal-consistent social group biases that extended beyond their explicit social preferences, by measuring children's preferences, imitation, and behavioral intentions. Supporting our preregistered hypotheses, preschool-age participants favored small and large groups whose member received positive nonverbal signals, relative to groups whose member received more negative nonverbal signals. We also replicated prior work indicating that children will acquire individual target biases from the observation of biased nonverbal signals. Here we make the case that generalized social group biases can be rapidly and unintentionally transmitted on the basis of observational learning from nonverbal signals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Beginning early in life, children are exposed to people who differ in social status. In five studies, we investigate whether 3- to 6-year-old children recognize different dimensions of status (i.e....

Are there disparities in children's memory for gender-neutral pronouns compared with gendered pronouns? We explored this question in two preregistered studies with 4- to 10-year-old children (N = 168; 79 boys, 89 girls, 0 gender-diverse). Participants were presented with a memory task. An experimenter read an illustrated story about a target character. Participants were asked to verbally repeat the story to measure spontaneous pronoun use and then to explicitly recall the characters' pronouns. In Study 1 the story characters had typically feminine or typically masculine appearances (determined by independent raters), whereas in Study 2 the characters had gender-neutral appearances. In both studies, targets were referred to with gendered or gender-neutral pronouns. In both studies, children more accurately recalled gendered pronouns than gender-neutral pronouns. However, on most tasks, children only used "they" if a character had gender-neutral pronouns, and almost never used "they" if a character had gendered pronouns. We also found some evidence suggesting that older children more accurately recall gender-neutral pronouns compared with younger children.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Concerns about early childhood social transitions among transgender youth include that these youth may later change their gender identification (ie, retransition), a process that could be distressing. The current study aimed to provide the first estimate of retransitioning and to report the current gender identities of youth an average of 5 years after their initial social transitions. METHODS The current study examined the rate of retransition and current gender identities of 317 initially transgender youth (208 transgender girls, 109 transgender boys; M = 8.1 years at start of study) participating in a longitudinal study, the Trans Youth Project. Data were reported by youth and their parents through in-person or online visits or via e-mail or phone correspondence. RESULTS We found that an average of 5 years after their initial social transition, 7.3% of youth had retransitioned at least once. At the end of this period, most youth identified as binary transgender youth (94%), including 1.3% who retransitioned to another identity before returning to their binary transgender identity. A total of 2.5% of youth identified as cisgender and 3.5% as nonbinary. Later cisgender identities were more common among youth whose initial social transition occurred before age 6 years; their retransitions often occurred before age 10 years. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that retransitions are infrequent. More commonly, transgender youth who socially transitioned at early ages continued to identify that way. Nonetheless, understanding retransitions is crucial for clinicians and families to help make retransitions as smooth as possible for youth.

Objective An increasing number of children are socially transitioning to live as their identified genders rather than their assigned sexes, yet little empirical work has examined the decision-making process surrounding social transitions. We aimed to understand (1) why parents and their gender nonconforming children do and do not consider social transitions and (2) whether families discuss social transitions both before and after initial social transitions. Methods Studies 1 and 2 involved telephone interviews of parents of socially transitioned transgender children (N=60) and gender nonconforming children who were not socially transitioned (N=60), respectively. Study 3 involved an online survey of 266 parents of socially transitioned transgender children. Results Parents of socially transitioned transgender children (Study 1) and parents of gender nonconforming children who are not socially transitioned (Study 2) often reported that their children had led the decision to transition or not. Most parents of gender nonconforming children who had not transitioned had discussed transitioning (Study 2) and most parents of socially-transitioned transgender children reported discussing the option of future re-transitions (Study 3). Conclusions Parents often report that they and their children are discussing social transitions, a process that children are leading. In contrast to possible concerns about discussing transitions, our results suggest that many families openly discuss the possibility of their children transitioning (or re-transitioning), yet these discussion do not inevitably lead to an imminent transition.

Increasing numbers of gender-nonconforming children are socially transitioning—changing pronouns to live as their identified genders. We studied a cohort of gender-nonconforming children ( n = 85) and contacted them again approximately 2 years later. When recontacted, 36 of the children had socially transitioned. We found that stronger cross-sex identification and preferences expressed by gender-nonconforming children at initial testing predicted whether they later socially transitioned. We then compared the gender-nonconforming children with groups of transitioned transgender children ( n = 84) and gender-conforming controls ( n = 85). Children from our longitudinal cohort who would later transition were highly similar to transgender children (children who had already socially transitioned) and to control children of the gender to which they would eventually transition. Gender-nonconforming children who would not go on to transition were different from these groups. These results suggest that (a) social transitions may be predictable from gender identification and preferences and (b) gender identification and preferences may not meaningfully differ before and after social transitions.

OBJECTIVE Transgender children who have socially transitioned, that is, who identify as the gender “opposite” their natal sex and are supported to live openly as that gender, are increasingly visible in society, yet we know nothing about their mental health. Previous work with children with gender identity disorder (GID; now termed gender dysphoria) has found remarkably high rates of anxiety and depression in these children. Here we examine, for the first time, mental health in a sample of socially transitioned transgender children. METHODS A community-based national sample of transgender, prepubescent children (n = 73, aged 3–12 years), along with control groups of nontransgender children in the same age range (n = 73 age- and gender-matched community controls; n = 49 sibling of transgender participants), were recruited as part of the TransYouth Project. Parents completed anxiety and depression measures. RESULTS Transgender children showed no elevations in depression and slightly elevated anxiety relative to population averages. They did not differ from the control groups on depression symptoms and had only marginally higher anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSIONS Socially transitioned transgender children who are supported in their gender identity have developmentally normative levels of depression and only minimal elevations in anxiety, suggesting that psychopathology is not inevitable within this group. Especially striking is the comparison with reports of children with GID; socially transitioned transgender children have notably lower rates of internalizing psychopathology than previously reported among children with GID living as their natal sex.

Children essentialize gender from a young age, viewing it as inborn, biologically based, unchanging, and predictive of preferences and behaviors. Children's gender essentialism appears to be so pervasive that it is found within conservative and liberal communities, and among transgender and cisgender children. However, it remains unclear what aspect of gender the children participating in past studies essentialized. Such studies used labels such as "girl" or "boy" without clarifying how children (or researchers) interpreted them. Are they indicators of the target's biological categorization at birth (sex), the target's sense of their own gender (gender identity), or some third possible interpretation? This distinction becomes particularly relevant when transgender children are concerned, as their sex assigned at birth and gender identity are not aligned. In the present two studies, we discovered that 6- to 11-year-old transgender children, their cisgender siblings, and unrelated cisgender children, all essentialized both sex and gender identity. Moreover, transgender and cisgender children did not differ in their essentialism of sex (i.e., whether body parts would remain stable over time). Importantly, however, transgender children were less likely than unrelated cisgender children to essentialize when hearing an ambiguous gender/sex label ("girl" or "boy"). Finally, the two studies showed mixed findings on whether the participant groups differed in reasoning about the stability of a gender-nonconforming target's gender identity. These findings illustrate that a child's identity can relate to their conceptual development, as well as the importance of diversifying samples to enhance our understanding of social cognitive development.

Previous work has documented adolescents' gender stereotype endorsement, or the extent to which one believes men or women should embody certain traits. However, understanding of gender stereotype endorsement in gender diverse adolescents - those who identify with a gender different from their assigned sex at birth - is limited. Gender diverse adolescents' unique lived experiences with gender raise the question of whether they endorse gender stereotypes with the same frequency as cisgender adolescents. In this study, we investigated two primary research questions: (1) if gender diverse (N = 150) and cisgender (N = 174) adolescents (13 - 17 years) or their parents differed from one another in their endorsement of gender stereotypes; (2) the relationship between adolescents' and their parents' endorsement of gender stereotypes, and adolescents' predictions of their parents' endorsement of stereotypes. We found (1) no significant differences between gender diverse and cisgender adolescents in endorsement of gender stereotypes, perceptions of their parents' gender stereotype endorsement, and parents' gender stereotype endorsement, though parents endorsed stereotypes less than adolescents; and (2) adolescents' endorsement of gender stereotypes showed a weak positive association with their parents' gender stereotypes and the adolescents' predictions of their parents' stereotype endorsement, though neither correlation was significant. These results suggest that, in our sample, explicit stereotype endorsement was rare among gender diverse and cisgender adolescents and their parents.

Despite extant evidence of negative peer treatment of transgender adolescents and adults, little is known about how young children perceive transgender peers, particularly those who have socially-transitioned, or are living in line with their gender, rather than sex at birth. Whereas children have been shown to be averse to gender nonconformity in peers, because many transgender children appear and behave in ways consistent with their expressed gender (but not their sex at birth), it is unclear how children evaluate these identities. In two studies, we investigated 5- to 10-year-old children’s (N(total)=113) preferences for transgender vs. gender-”typical” peers who either shared their gender identity or did not. We also examined whether children categorize transgender peers by their sex or expressed gender, as this might inform their evaluations. Children preferred cisgender peers over transgender peers; however, they also liked peers of their own gender rather than the other gender (e.g., female participants preferred girls over boys), demonstrating that the oft-documented own-gender bias plays an important role even when children are reasoning about transgender peers. Children did not reliably categorize transgender peers by sex or gender; yet, those who categorized transgender peers by their sex showed greater dislike of transgender peers. The current studies are the first to investigate cisgender children’s attitudes toward transgender children, and suggest that perceptions of gender categorization and conformity play a role in children’s evaluations of transgender peers.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is increasingly used in developmental research despite minimal evidence of whether children's IAT scores are reliable across time or predictive of behavior. When test-retest reliability and predictive validity have been assessed, the results have been mixed, and because these studies have differed on many factors simultaneously (lag-time between testing administrations, domain, etc.), it is difficult to discern what factors may explain variability in existing test-retest reliability and predictive validity estimates. Across five studies (total N = 519; ages 6- to 11-years-old), we manipulated two factors that have varied in previous developmental research-lag-time and domain. An internal meta-analysis of these studies revealed that, across three different methods of analyzing the data, mean test-retest (rs of .48, .38, and .34) and predictive validity (rs of .46, .20, and .10) effect sizes were significantly greater than zero. While lag-time did not moderate the magnitude of test-retest coefficients, whether we observed domain differences in test-retest reliability and predictive validity estimates was contingent on other factors, such as how we scored the IAT or whether we included estimates from a unique sample (i.e., a sample containing gender typical and gender diverse children). Recommendations are made for developmental researchers that utilize the IAT in their research. (PsycINFO Database Record

Lay theories suggest that people who are overconfident in their knowledge are less likely to revise that knowledge when someone else offers an alternative belief. Similarly, one might assume that people who are willing to revise their beliefs might not be very confident in their knowledge to begin with. Two studies with children ages 4-11 years old and college students call these lay theories into question. We found that young children were simultaneously more overconfident in their knowledge (e.g., believing they knew what chartreuse meant) and more likely to revise their initial beliefs (e.g., choosing another color after seeing a peer choose a different color) than older children and adults. These results bridge the metacognitive and epistemic trust literatures, which have largely progressed independently from each other. We discuss the potential causes and functions of the dissociation between the confidence with which beliefs are held and the revision of those beliefs across development. (PsycINFO Database Record

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience creating the TransYouth Project in 2013, to understand the young transgender and gender-nonconforming children that do not behave like their peers in terms of early gender development.

Gender identity is a core feature of human experience, yet our understanding of gender identity is shifting with broader societal changes in recognizing and understanding gender diversity. Here we discuss recent trends and upcoming directions for this burgeoning subfield.

Identifying the origins of social bias is critical to devising strategies to overcome prejudice. In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that young children can catch novel social biases from brief exposure to biased nonverbal signals demonstrated by adults. Our results are consistent with this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, we found that children who were exposed to a brief video depicting nonverbal bias in favor of one individual over another subsequently explicitly preferred, and were more prone to behave prosocially toward, the target of positive nonverbal signals. Moreover, in Experiment 2, preschoolers generalized such bias to other individuals. The spread of bias observed in these experiments lays a critical foundation for understanding the way that social biases may develop and spread early in childhood.

Developmental research on social categorization has overwhelmingly focused on perceptions about and experiences of individuals who are clear or prototypical members of discrete and usually dichotomous social categories. For example, studies of social categorization, stereotyping, prejudice, and social identity have generally explored how children reason about others who are gender-typical boys or girls or monoracial White or Black children. Similarly, research participants have generally been gender-typical and monoracial. However, our efforts to build theories that account for the true range of variation require acknowledging the increasing visibility of children who do not fit into these discrete categories and raise the question of whether existing theories can capture the dynamics that arise for them. Focusing on race and gender/sex, the social categories that have received the most attention in the developmental literature, we review research that has gone beyond simple dichotomies by including multi...

Lay people routinely misunderstand or do not obey laws protecting intellectual property (IP), leading to a variety of (largely unsuccessful) efforts by policymakers, IP owners, and researchers to change those beliefs and behaviors. The current work tests a new approach, inquiring whether lay people's views about IP protection can be modified by arguments concerning the basis for IP rights. Across 2 experiments, 572 adults (recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk) read 1 of 6 arguments about the basis for IP protection (incentives, natural rights, expressive rights, plagiarism, commons, or no argument). Participants then reported their general support for IP protection. Participants also reported their evaluations of 2 scenarios that involved infringement of IP rights, including cases in which there were mitigating experiences (e.g., the copier acknowledged the original source), and completed several demographic questions. Three primary findings emerged: (a) exposure to the importance of the public commons (and to a lesser extent, exposure to the argument that plagiarism is the basis of IP protection) led participants to become less supportive of IP protection than the incentives, natural rights, expressive rights, and control conditions; (b) people believed that infringement was more acceptable if the infringer acknowledged the original creator of the work; and (c) older adults and women were especially likely to see infringement as problematic. These findings illustrate several ways in which lay beliefs are at odds with legal doctrine, and suggest that people's views about IP protection can be shaped in certain ways by learning the basis for IP rights. (PsycINFO Database Record

Intellectual humility is usually regarded as a virtue. In this paper, we conceptualized intellectual humility along two dimensions: (1) placing an adequate level of confidence in one’s own beliefs; (2) being willing to consider other people’s beliefs. We tested whether children (ages 4 to 11 years) and adults perceived intellectual humility as positive and how these perceptions changed across development. To do so, we asked participants to evaluate an intellectually humble person as compared to an intellectually arrogant person, who readily dismissed other people’s beliefs, or to an intellectually diffident person, who was unsure of a well-supported belief. Young children did not favor the intellectually humble person over the others, but older children and adults liked this person better and tended to consider her nicer than the arrogant one and smarter than the diffident one. These findings suggest that the virtuousness of intellectual humility in others is recognized from mid-childhood on.

For decades the prevailing view in the United States and many Western countries has been that China does not appropriately respect intellectual property rights. These beliefs lie at the heart of President Donald Trump’s current trade war with China. Despite substantial geopolitical debate over differences between American and Chinese attitudes towards intellectual property rights, and despite the critical effects that such attitudes have on international economic markets and the function of the intellectual property system, empirical evidence of these attitudes is largely lacking. This Article presents original survey and experimental research that explores cross-cultural differences between American and Chinese attitudes towards intellectual property rights, personal property rights, and real property rights. The results of the studies are somewhat counter-intuitive. First, Chinese participants are found to have more consistent preferences towards different types of property rights than Americans. In a series of vignettes designed to test attitudes towards patented subject matter, copyrighted subject matter, tangible personal property, and real property, Chinese responses were more consistent and less context driven. Second, Americans do identify a preference for stronger intellectual property rights than Chinese, but only where infringement is committed by a private party for private benefit. Where infringement is conducted for public benefit, whether by a private or a governmental entity, Chinese and Americans tend to have the same attitudes towards intellectual property rights. Third, Americans display a lower regard for intellectual property rights than for tangible property rights in most contexts, a differential that is not echoed in Chinese responses. The distinctions that Americans draw based on the use to which property is put, and between intellectual property and tangible property, is not consistent with the law. Our experiments reveal that the ongoing debates over Chinese attitudes towards intellectual property rights miss the mark in certain regards. Chinese and American preferences for property rights are more similar than most have assumed, and the manners in which they differ are inconsistent with most proffered theories. These results provide important lessons for the future of international intellectual property rights relations, discourse, and enforcement.

Researchers have proposed different accounts of the development of prosocial behavior in children. Some have argued that behaviors like helping and sharing must be learned and reinforced; others propose that children have an initially indiscriminate prosocial drive that declines and becomes more selective with age; and yet others contend that even children’s earliest prosocial behaviors share some strategic motivations with the prosociality of adults (e.g., reputation enhancement, social affiliation). We review empirical and observational research on children’s helping and sharing behaviors in the first 5 years of life, focusing on factors that have been found to influence these behaviors and on what these findings suggest about children’s prosocial motivations. We use the adult prosociality literature to highlight parallels and gaps in the literature on the development of prosocial behavior. We address how the evidence reviewed bears on central questions in the developmental psychology literature and propose that children’s prosocial behaviors may be driven by multiple motivations not easily captured by the idea of intrinsic or extrinsic motivation and may be selective quite early in life.

The industrialized world is becoming more ethnically diverse. Research in several disciplines has suggested that exposure to racial out-groups may be associated with more positive and more negative intergroup attitudes. Given that U.S. states are often at the center of debate regarding diversity-related public policy, we examined how exposure to out-groups is associated with state-level implicit and explicit race bias among White and Black Americans. We found that larger proportions of Black residents across U.S. states were associated with stronger implicit and explicit in-group bias among both White and Black respondents. State-level bias was predicted by proportions of Black residents even when controlling for (a) state-level demographic control variables (e.g., median income), (b) proportions of non-Black minorities, and (c) historical membership in the Confederacy. Our results convey the importance of investigating why diversity may not always have the positive impact on intergroup relations that one might hope it to have.

In the present work, we ask whether socially transitioned, transgender children differ from other children in their endorsement of gender stereotypes and response to others' gender nonconformity. We compare transgender children (N = 56) to a group of siblings of transgender children (N = 37), and a group of unrelated control participants (N = 56) during middle childhood (ages 6-8 years old). Our results indicate that transgender children and the siblings of transgender children endorse gender stereotypes less than the control group. Further, transgender children see violations of gender stereotypes as more acceptable, and they are more willing to indicate a desire to befriend and attend school with someone who violates gender stereotypes than the control participants. These results held after statistically controlling for demographic differences between families with and without transgender children. We discuss several possible reasons that can explain these differences.

An increasing number of transgender children—those who express a gender identity that is “opposite” their natal sex—are socially transitioning, or presenting as their gender identity in everyday life. This study asks whether these children differ from gender-typical peers on basic gender development tasks. Three- to 5-year-old socially transitioned transgender children (n = 36) did not differ from controls matched on age and expressed gender (n = 36), or siblings of transgender and gender nonconforming children (n = 24) on gender preference, behavior, and belief measures. However, transgender children were less likely than both control groups to believe that their gender at birth matches their current gender, whereas both transgender children and siblings were less likely than controls to believe that other people's gender is stable.

Children help others to complete their goals. Yet adults are sometimes motivated to help others in a "paternalistic" way, overriding a recipient's desires if they conflict with the recipient's best interests. Experiments investigated whether 5-year-olds (n = 100) consider a recipient's desire, and the consequences of fulfilling this desire, when helping. Children overrode a request for chocolate in favor of giving fruit snacks, if chocolate would make the recipient sick. Children did not override a request for chocolate in favor of carrots, even if chocolate would make the recipient sick, but they gave carrots if the recipient requested them. By age 5, children balance different motivations when helping, considering the recipient's desires, consequences of fulfilling them, and alternative forms of helping available.

Bartlett developed the procedures of repeated reproduction (the same person repeatedly recalling information) and serial reproduction (people transmitting information from one person to another). Our experiment directly compared recall accuracy across these two techniques, which has not previously been reported, using DRM word lists. Recall of the initial study list words remained constant across repeated reproductions but declined markedly across serial reproductions. In contrast, recall of associated words that were not originally studied (i.e. critical words) was steady across both conditions. Because more of the original list words were forgotten across each link of the serial reproduction chain, the proportion of critical items recalled (relative to list words) increased significantly as the list passed between people. Using output bound scoring, serial reproduction resulted in lower accuracy than repeated reproduction by the final recall trial. Our results are broadly consistent with Bartlett's (1932) informal observations: Serial reproduction produces greater forgetting of the original material than does repeated reproduction and also leads to greater distortion relative to the proportion of correct material recalled.

Six-year-old children negatively evaluate plagiarizers just as adults do (Olson & Shaw, 2011), but why do they dislike plagiarizers? Children may think plagiarism is wrong because plagiarizing negatively impacts other people's reputations. We investigated this possibility by having 6- to 9-year-old children evaluate people who shared their own or other people's ideas (stories). In Experiment 1, we found that children consider it acceptable to retell someone else's story if the source is given credit for their story (improving the source's reputation), but not if the reteller claims credit for the story (steals credit away from someone else). Experiments 2 and 3 showed that children do not consider it bad to lie by giving someone else credit for one's own good story (improving someone else's reputation), but do consider it bad to give someone else credit for one's own bad story (improving one's own reputation at the expense of someone else's). Experiment 4 demonstrated that children think it is equally bad to take credit for someone else's idea for oneself as it is to take someone else's idea and give credit to someone else, suggesting that children dislike when others take credit away from someone else, regardless of whether or not it improves the plagiarizer's reputation. Our results suggest that children dislike plagiarism because it negatively affects others' reputations by taking credit away from them.

Copying other people’s ideas is evaluated negatively by American children and adults. The current study investigated the influence of culture on children’s evaluations of plagiarism by comparing children from three countries—the United States, Mexico, and China—that differ in terms of their emphasis on the protection of intellectual property and ideas. Children (3- to 6-year-olds) were presented with videos involving two characters drawing pictures and were asked to evaluate the character who drew unique work or the character who copied someone else’s drawing. The study showed that 5- and 6-year-olds from all three cultures evaluated copiers negatively compared with unique drawers. These results suggest that children from cultures that place different values on the protection of ideas nevertheless develop similar concerns with plagiarism by 5-year-olds.

Children, across cultures, show an early-emerging tendency to essentialize gender, viewing gender as inborn and predictive of stereotypical preferences. However, research has been limited to children whose own gender experience is largely consistent with the assumptions of gender essentialism. In contrast, transgender children have gender identities (and related stereotypical preferences) that differ from their sex assigned at birth, which therefore appear to challenge an essentialist view of gender. In the current study, we examined the degree to which transgender children (N = 97, 3-11 years) view a child's sex at birth as predictive of their later gender-typed preferences. Additionally, we recruited two comparison groups: cisgender siblings of transgender participants (N = 59) and cisgender, age- and gender-matched controls (N = 90). In an adapted switched-at-birth paradigm, participants in all groups believed that a child's sex at birth would predict their later gender-typed preferences; participants were especially likely to think so when the target character was reared in a socialization environment that aligned with the target's own gender, rather than one where the socialization environment aligned with a different gender. Whereas cisgender participants showed a decline in essentialism with age, transgender children did not show any age-related changes in their beliefs. The current findings are the first to show that transgender and cisgender children, despite differences in gender experiences, might similarly essentialize gender. However, these findings also raise questions about how different participant groups might interpret measures differently.

Social groups are often described as hierarchically ordered in terms of social status. Intergroup research has generally focused on the relationship between the highest-status group and a single lower-status group, leaving relationships among nondominant groups relatively unexplored. Focusing on low-status Black and intermediate-status Coloured (multiracial) South African elementary school-children, we examined the attitudes members of these two groups hold toward one another and toward a range of other locally salient groups, as well as their wealth-related stereotypes and preferences. Results indicated that both Coloured and Black children implicitly preferred Coloured over Black, and also strongly associated Coloured (vs. Black) with wealth, suggesting a powerful tendency to internalize the status quo. However, Black children exhibited stronger preferences for other social groups, as well as stronger preferences for wealth in general, possibly as a means of compensating for their devalued status in the...

Over the last several decades, social psychologists have generated a literature rich with information about the racial intergroup attitudes and biases of adults. In parallel, developmental psychologists have documented the emergence and development of these attitudes in children, yet surprisingly little cross-talk occurs between the two fields. Here, we review the developmental literature on racial intergroup attitudes with an eye toward two major themes observed frequently in the social psychology literature: the tendency to favor one's own group and the tendency to favor higher-status groups. We review empirical findings beginning in infancy, revealing that the earliest signs of racial differentiation are present in the first year of life and continue through the elementary school years, noting that explicit attitudes undergo vast developmental changes whereas implicit attitudes remain remarkably stable throughout the lifespan. We also examine potential ways the developmental literature might inform the social psychology of racial intergroup attitudes.

Identifying the origins of social bias is critical to devising strategies to overcome prejudice. In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that young children can catch novel social biases from brief exposure to biased nonverbal signals demonstrated by adults. Our results are consistent with this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, we found that children who were exposed to a brief video depicting nonverbal bias in favor of one individual over another subsequently explicitly preferred, and were more prone to behave prosocially toward, the target of positive nonverbal signals. Moreover, in Experiment 2, preschoolers generalized such bias to other individuals. The spread of bias observed in these experiments lays a critical foundation for understanding the way that social biases may develop and spread early in childhood.

We are grateful for the comment from McKean et al on our article reporting on anxiety and depression among a group of socially transitioned, prepubescent transgender children ages 3 to 12 years.1 Although we have additional research in progress that can better speak to some of their concerns (eg, the focus in the first article on parental reports), we are able to provide additional information from the Pediatrics data set to address their 2 major concerns: (1) the (high) socioeconomic status of our participants; and (2) the results with regard to the age distribution of our sample. First, McKean et al point out that our study focused on a “narrow socioeconomic sample,” or more specifically, that our sample was considerably wealthier than the average American or Canadian family. This issue is one we have discussed elsewhere,2 and we agree that it is a limit to the generalizability of our findings. To better understand this issue, we report our results according to socioeconomic group in Table 1. It is … E-mail: krolson{at}uw.edu

Objective Social transitions are increasingly common for transgender children. A social transition involves a child presenting to other people as a member of the "opposite" gender in all contexts (e.g., wearing clothes and using pronouns of that gender). Little is known about the well-being of socially transitioned transgender children. This study examined self-reported depression, anxiety, and self-worth in socially transitioned transgender children compared with 2 control groups: age- and gender-matched controls and siblings of transgender children. Method As part of a longitudinal study (TransYouth Project), children (9–14 years old) and their parents completed measurements of depression and anxiety (n = 63 transgender children, n = 63 controls, n = 38 siblings). Children (6–14 years old; n = 116 transgender children, n = 122 controls, n = 72 siblings) also reported on their self-worth. Mental health and self-worth were compared across groups. Results Transgender children reported depression and self-worth that did not differ from their matched-control or sibling peers ( p = .311), and they reported marginally higher anxiety ( p = .076). Compared with national averages, transgender children showed typical rates of depression ( p = .290) and marginally higher rates of anxiety ( p = .096). Parents similarly reported that their transgender children experienced more anxiety than children in the control groups ( p = .002) and rated their transgender children as having equivalent levels of depression ( p = .728). Conclusion These findings are in striking contrast to previous work with gender-nonconforming children who had not socially transitioned, which found very high rates of depression and anxiety. These findings lessen concerns from previous work that parents of socially transitioned children could be systematically underreporting mental health problems.

OBJECTIVE: Transgender children who have socially transitioned, that is, who identify as the gender “opposite” their natal sex and are supported to live openly as that gender, are increasingly visible in society, yet we know nothing about their mental health. Previous work with children with gender identity disorder (GID; now termed gender dysphoria) has found remarkably high rates of anxiety and depression in these children. Here we examine, for the first time, mental health in a sample of socially transitioned transgender children. METHODS: A community-based national sample of transgender, prepubescent children (n = 73, aged 3–12 years), along with control groups of nontransgender children in the same age range (n = 73 age- and gender-matched community controls; n = 49 sibling of transgender participants), were recruited as part of the TransYouth Project. Parents completed anxiety and depression measures. RESULTS: Transgender children showed no elevations in depression and slightly elevated anxiety relative to population averages. They did not differ from the control groups on depression symptoms and had only marginally higher anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Socially transitioned transgender children who are supported in their gender identity have developmentally normative levels of depression and only minimal elevations in anxiety, suggesting that psychopathology is not inevitable within this group. Especially striking is the comparison with reports of children with GID; socially transitioned transgender children have notably lower rates of internalizing psychopathology than previously reported among children with GID living as their natal sex.

Children respond positively to individuals who favor them and also to individuals who are fair. The present studies examine the interaction between these two preferences by presenting children with two distributors who share resources with the child participant and another recipient. Childrenareaskedwhomtheylikebetter:thedistributorwhowasunfairbutfavoredthechildparticipantorthedistributorwhowasfairandshowed no(orreduced)favoritism.InStudy1,wefindthatwhenfairnessandfavoritismareinconflict,childrenaresplitonwhomtheyprefer.InStudy2,we find thatplacing childrenina competitive context leads toa stronger preferencefor the distributor who favored the child participant.In Study3, we examinewhetherchildren's preferencefor favoritismpersistswhenbothdistributorsgavethechildthesamenumberof rewards,butonedistributor gavethechildparticipantrelativelymorethantheotherrecipient.Inthissituation,wefindthatchildrenpreferthefairdistributor.However,weagain find that creating a competitive context reduces children's preference for the fair distributor. Finally we find that in a third-party context, children value fairness over generosity. Taken together, these results show how children balance competing concerns for fairness and favoritism.

Group-based social hierarchies exist in nearly every society, yet little is known about whether children understand that they exist. The present studies investigated whether 3- to 10-year-old children (N = 84) in South Africa associate higher status racial groups with higher levels of wealth, one indicator of social status. Children matched higher value belongings with White people more often than with multiracial or Black people and with multiracial people more often than with Black people, thus showing sensitivity to the de facto racial hierarchy in their society. There were no age-related changes in children’s tendency to associate racial groups with wealth differences. The implications of these results are discussed in light of the general tendency for people to legitimize and perpetuate the status quo. Nearly every human society includes groups of people who vary in social status (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). History is replete with examples of societies in which groups are clearly delineated by status, from the caste systems of India and New Spain to the Jim Crow policies of the American South. The country at the center of the present article—South Africa—was home to one of the most notorious examples of legally sanctioned social hierarchy: apartheid. From 1948 to 1994, the South African government built upon and strengthened an existing race- and privilege-based social hierarchy created by the Dutch and British colonial administrations. Apartheid laws enforced a strict race-based hierarchy with Whites as the highest status group, Blacks as the lowest status group, and groups like Coloureds (people of mixed racial heritage) and Indians in between (Finchilescu & Tredoux, 2010). Even societies without de jure hierarchy delineations often feature de facto groupbased hierarchies (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Most children are born into and develop in societies with legally enforced or culturally implied group-based hierarchies. The present article investigates whether or not children in South Africa are sensitive to group-based social hierarchies in their society. We focus in particular on children’s perceptions of wealth, one observable aspect of social status. Determining whether children represent differences between the relative status of different racial groups is important, given evidence that people tend to believe that the way things are is the way they ought to be (e.g., Jost & Banaji, 1994; Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1991; Lerner, 1980; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Observing status hierarchies in their society may lead children to see higher status racial groups as more deserving of their status; even more insidiously, children may set their own aspirations according to their perception of their group’s status in society. We focus on children in South Africa, a country with a long history of race-based status differences, including wealth disparities that persist to the present day.

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.

Adults believe that plagiarizing ideas is wrong, which requires an understanding that others can have ideas and that it is wrong to copy them. In order to test when this understanding emerges, we investigated when children begin to think plagiarism is wrong. In Study 1, children aged 7, 9 and 11 years old, as well as adults, disliked someone who plagiarized compared to someone who drew an original drawing or someone who drew an identical picture by chance. Study 2 investigated the same question with younger children, focusing on children aged 3–6 years old. Children aged 5–6 years old evaluated plagiarizers negatively relative to unique drawers, but 3–4-year-olds did not. Study 3 replicated the findings from Study 2 and found that children justify their negative evaluations of plagiarizers by mentioning concerns over copying. These experiments provide evidence that, by age 5 years old, children understand that others have ideas and dislike the copying of these ideas.