The interplay between intuitive psychology and intuitive sociology

In the early childhood years, children build domain-specific causal-explanatory frameworks, or ‘intuitive theories,’ of the biological, physical, and social worlds to help them explain and predict their environment (Wellman & Gelman, 1992). These theories point to unobservable causal mechanisms (e.g., gravity for intuitive physics, growth for intuitive biology, beliefs for intuitive psychology) that allow children to predict the outcomes of novel events. By preschool, children have access to at least two types of theories for explaining human behaviour – an intuitive psychology, which centres on the role of individual mental states (e.g., beliefs, desires, intentions; Wellman, 1990), and an intuitive sociology, which appeals to social causes that extend beyond the individual, including memberships in social categories, social and moral norms, and social status (Hirschfeld, 1996; Rhodes, 2013). Whereas much prior research has separately examined the development of these two intuitive theories, Abrams et al., 2014 provide a rare and important examination of how intuitive psychology and sociology interact with one another to shape children’s understanding of complex social events. A basic component of children’s intuitive sociology is that social groups mark social relationships and obligations (Rhodes, 2013). By the preschool years, children expect members of the same social group to be friends with one another preferentially (Shutts, Roben, & Spelke, 2013), to share the same social norms (Kalish & Lawson, 2008; Schmidt, Rakoczy, &Tomasello, 2012), and to avoid harming one another (Rhodes, 2012; Rhodes& Chalik, 2013). Thus, certainly by the ages tested here (ages 6–7), children expect people to prefer members of their own in-groups to members of outgroups. How do children balance this general expectation that groups shape social preferences with information about the behaviour of particular individuals? Earlier in childhood, categories appear to ‘trump’ information about individual properties in shaping children’s social inferences. For example, preschool-age children predict that people will behave in line with gender norms (e.g., that a girl will prefer a doll to a truck), even if the particular individual has previously expressed atypical preferences, traits, or was raised in an atypical environment (Berndt & Heller, 1986; Biernat, 1991; Taylor, 1996). Also, preschool-age children show better memory for information about categories (e.g., that boys are good at puzzles) than comparable information about individuals (e.g., that a particular boy is good at puzzles; Cimpian & Erickson,