Investigating the effects priming on social categorization in early childhood

Although children automatically categorize people into social groups from a young age, how they learn to automatically activate and apply category schemas to people is not well understood. In a sample of racially diverse children (N=223; Mage=7.24, SDage=2.51; 132 girls; 42.6% white; 43.05% racially minoritized), we tested the degree to which activating category schemas facilitates social categorization. Children were primed with gender-relevant, race-relevant, or neutral words, and then categorized Black, White, and Asian faces by their gender under a time constraint. Children’s gender categorizations became more efficient with age, particularly when primed with race. Whether and how children’s gender categorizations were influenced by gender primes depended on their own social identity—white children categorized men faster than women regardless of priming condition, but priming gender attenuated this androcentric bias among racially minoritized children.