“Shape bias” goes social: Children categorize people by weight rather than race

Abstract

AbstractChildren tend to categorize novel objects according to their shape rather than their color, texture, or other salient properties—known as “shape bias.” We investigated whether this bias also extends to the social domain, where it should lead children to categorize people according to their weight (their body shape) rather than their race (their skin color). In Study 1, participants (n = 50 US 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds) were asked to extend a novel label from a target object/person to either an object/person who shared the target's shape/weight, color/race, or neither. Children selected the shape‐/weight‐matched individual over the color‐/race‐matched individual (dobjects = 1.58, dpeople = 0.99) and their shape biases were correlated across the two domains. In Study 2, participants (n = 20 US 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds) were asked to extend a novel internal property from a target person to either a person who shared the target's weight, race, or neither. Again, children selected the weight‐matched individual (d = 1.98), suggesting they view an individual's weight as more predictive of their internal properties than their race. Overall, results suggest that children's early shape bias extends into the social domain. Implications for weight bias and early social cognition are discussed.Research Highlights Preschoolers extend novel labels based on people's weight rather than their race. Preschoolers infer internal features based on people's weight rather than their race. Shape biases are present, and correlated, across the social and object domains.