Research

Our research addresses two broad questions:

  1. What are the nature and consequences of intuitive theories of the social world across development?

  2. How do various forms of cultural input facilitate conceptual development?

Intuitive theories of the social world

A primary goal of our research is to investigate people’s abstract understanding of the social world. In doing so, we seek to examine how this understanding allows young children to predict and explain people’s behavior, as well as to document whether these beliefs remain continuous or undergo change across development. Our research thus far has shown that as early as the preschool years, children develop an intuitive theory--an abstract, domain-specific, causal-explanatory framework--by which they see social category members as holding moral obligations toward one another. Our current research asks about the structure of this theory, as well as about its consequences for children's inferences and expectations about others. We also investigate how adults’ beliefs about social categories inform how they navigate the social world. Specific projects investigating these issues include:

  • How does children’s abstract understanding of social obligations facilitate their predictions about behavior in intergroup contexts?

  • How do children’s abstract expectations about social behavior relate to their evaluations of the intergroup behaviors they see in their everyday lives?

  • How do children revise their theories of the social world in response to what they see and hear around them?

  • How do children’s intuitive theories inform their attitudes toward the groups that they actually encounter in the world?

Cultural input and conceptual development

We are also interested in the features of cultural input that contribute to children's developing theories of the world. Adults communicate a great deal of information to their children, in the form of actual spoken content, subtle linguistic cues, and modeled behaviors. We explore the ways in which parents and other adults communicate their beliefs about the world to children, as well as the ways in which children learn from and respond to this communication. Specific projects investigating these issues include:

  • What are the actual experiences that children have in their daily lives that might inform their intuitive sociological beliefs?

  • How do children seek out and learn from the information that adults communicate to them about ingroups and outgroups?