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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 22, 2025

A Complex Diving-For-Food Task to Investigate Social Organization and Interactions in Rats

A Complex Diving-For-Food Task to Investigate Social Organization and Interactions in Rats

Published on: May 8, 2021

Children's thinking about group-based social hierarchies.

Isobel A Heck¹, Kristin Shutts², Katherine D Kinzler¹

¹University of Chicago, Department of Psychology, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

|May 23, 2022

Summary

Children learn about social hierarchies and inequality from a young age. Understanding this early development is key to addressing intergroup biases and perpetuating social inequity.

Keywords:

social categorization social cognition social groups social hierarchies

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Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Social Psychology
Sociology

Background:

Social hierarchies, wealth, power, and status are unevenly distributed among social groups.
Recent research indicates that young children recognize, represent, and reason about group-based inequities.
Early childhood is a critical period for understanding the development of social biases.

Purpose of the Study:

To synthesize research on children's learning about group-based social hierarchies.
To explore the mechanisms through which children acquire knowledge of social structures.
To discuss children's roles as active participants in societal systems and the implications for intergroup biases.

Main Methods:

Literature synthesis of developmental and social psychology research.
Analysis of studies on children's cognitive and behavioral understanding of social hierarchies.
Review of research on the origins and development of intergroup biases in early childhood.

Main Results:

Children begin learning about social hierarchies and group-based inequities in their early years.
Children's learning processes involve recognizing, representing, and reasoning about social structures.
Children become active participants in social systems, influencing the perpetuation of inequity.

Conclusions:

Studying early childhood development of social hierarchy understanding offers insights into perpetuating inequity.
Early interventions can potentially mitigate and reshape intergroup biases related to wealth, power, and status.
Understanding the origins of these biases is crucial for developing strategies to foster greater social equity.