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The psychological mechanisms that subserve inductions about novel social categories in childhood are hotly debated. While research demonstrated that language, and in particular generic statements, plays a major role in how children learn to attribute properties to social categories, developmental theories propose other mechanisms. One theoretical account holds that the mere act of labeling social categories is sufficient for children to generalize properties to category members, because labels are considered as referring to significant, homogeneous kinds of people. A second theoretical account proposes that children generalize properties to category members from statistical evidence, that is, by directly observing regularities in their environment. The present study assessed those two hypotheses, by testing (via an online experiment) the effects of simple category labels and observation of statistical evidence on European 4- to 6-year-olds (N = 88) and 7- to 9-year-olds' (N = 92) predictions about novel social categories. From around 7 to 9 years, children generalized properties to category members based on simple category labels or on their observation of a majority of unlabeled category members having the same property. Four- to 6-year-old children, however, made similarity inferences only when both labels and statistical evidence were combined. Overall, the present study highlights a developmental shift from an early limited tendency to make similarity inferences to a later propensity to infer similarity from small evidence. These findings deepen our understanding of the conditions under which children start to make similarity inferences. Implications for the acquisition of stereotypes are also discussed.

Research over the past decades has demonstrated the explanatory power of emotions, feelings, motivations, moods, and other affective processes when trying to understand and predict how we think and behave. In this consensus article, we ask: has the increasingly recognized impact of affective phenomena ushered in a new era, the era of affectivism?

Given the complexity of human social life, it is astonishing to observe how quickly children adapt to their social environment. To be accepted by the other members, it is crucial to understand and follow the rules and norms shared by the group. How and from whom do young children learn these social rules? In the experiments, based on the crucial role of affective social learning and dominance hierarchies in simple rule understanding, we showed 15-to-23-month-olds and 3-to-5-year-old children videos where the agents’ body size and affective cues were manipulated. In the dominant rule-maker condition, when a smaller protagonist puts an object in one location, a bigger agent reacts with a positive reaction; on the contrary, when the smaller protagonist puts an object in another location, the bigger agent displays a negative reaction. In the subordinate rule-maker condition, the roles are shifted but the agents differ. Toddlers expect the protagonist to follow the rules (based on anticipatory looks), independent of the dominant status of the rule-making agent. Three-to-five-year-old pre-schoolers overall perform at the chance level but expect the protagonist to disobey a rule in the first trial, and obey the rule in the second trial if the rule-maker is dominant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group membership is a strong driver of everyday life in humans, influencing similarity judgments, trust choices, and learning processes. However, its ontogenetic development remains to be understood. This study investigated how group membership, age, sex, and identification with a team influenced 39- to 60-month-old children (N = 94) in a series of similarity, trust, and learning tasks. Group membership had the most influence on similarity and trust tasks, strongly biasing choices toward in-groups. In contrast, prior experience and identification with the team were the most important factors in the learning tasks. Finally, overimitation occurred most when the children's team, but not the opposite, displayed meaningless actions. Future work must investigate how these cognitive abilities combine during development to facilitate cultural processes.

Two experiments with preschoolers (36 to 78 months) and 8-year-old children (Experiment 1, N = 173; Experiment 2, N = 132) investigated the development of children's resource distribution in dominance contexts. On the basis of the distributive justice literature, 2 opposite predictions were tested. Children could match resource allocation with the unequal social setting they observe and thus favor a dominant individual over a subordinate 1. Alternatively, children could choose to compensate the subordinate if they consider that the dominance asymmetry should be counteracted. Two experiments using a giving task (Experiment 1) and a taking task (Experiment 2) led to the same results. In both experiments, children took dominance into account when allocating resources. Moreover, their distributive decisions were similarly affected by age: Although 3- and 4-year-old children favored the dominant individual, 5-year-old children showed no preference and 8-year-old children strongly favored the subordinate. Several mechanisms accounting for this developmental pattern are discussed.

A series of four experiments investigated preschoolers' abilities to make sense of dominance relations. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that as early as 3 years old, preschoolers are able to infer dominance not only from physical supremacy but also from decision power, age, and resources. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that preschoolers have expectations regarding the ways in which a dominant and a subordinate individual are likely to differ. In particular, they expect that an individual who imposes his choice on another will exhibit higher competence in games and will have more resources.