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A central question in social cognitive development concerns the degree to which children prefer social ingroup members relative to social outgroup members. Forced‐choice measures and continuous rating scales are often used to assess these preferences, but little work has examined the extent to which these two methods yield similar or divergent estimates. In Study 1, we used a within‐subjects design to assess gender‐, race‐, and accent‐based preferences in 5–6‐year‐old predominantly white children (N = 100) with both a forced‐choice and a rating measure (on a 1–6 scale); replicating prior work, children expressed ingroup preference along all three dimensions regardless of how they were assessed. In Study 2, we replicated the discrepancy between forced‐choice and rating in children's ingroup gender preferences in a more racially diverse sample (N = 55). In both studies, while responses on forced‐choice and rating measures were correlated, estimates of ingroup preference were stronger in each domain when assessed with a forced‐choice measure. We discuss the implications for researchers who wish to assess social group preferences.

 

Some children socially transition genders by changing their pronouns (and often names, hairstyles, and clothing) from those associated with their assigned sex at birth to those associated with their gender identity. We refer to children who have socially transitioned as transgender children. Using a prospective sample of children who socially transitioned during childhood (at or before the age of 12; age of transition: M = 6.82 years), we tested whether the parent-reported internalizing symptoms of transgender children were different before versus after they socially transitioned. The children were predominantly White (70.6% White) and girls (76.5% transgender girls, 23.5% transgender boys). Their parents tended to have high levels of education (74.5% bachelor’s degree or above) and lived in families with high household incomes (62.7% with household incomes of $75,000 or above). On average, youths showed lower levels of internalizing symptoms after socially transitioning versus before, suggesting a possible mental-health benefit of these transitions.

 

Despite increasing advocacy for gender equality, gender prejudice and discrimination persist. The origins of these biases develop in early childhood, but it is less clear whether (1) children's gender attitudes predict discrimination and (2) gender attitudes and discrimination vary by ethnicity and US region. We examine these questions with an ethnically (Asian, Black, Latinx and White) and geographically (Northeast, Pacific Northwest, West, Southeast and Hawaii) diverse sample of 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children (N = 605) who completed measures of gender attitudes and discrimination in a preregistered study. Children, across groups, demonstrated more positive attitudes towards their gender ingroup. Children who showed more pro‐ingroup attitudes also showed more pro‐ingroup behavioural discrimination. Girls showed stronger ingroup favouritism than boys, but ethnic and regional groups generally did not vary in levels of bias. These findings contribute to our understanding of how gender intergroup biases develop and highlight the generalizability of these processes.

 

Humans experience emotional benefits from engaging in prosocial behavior. The current work investigates factors that influence the experience of happiness from giving to others in early childhood. In three studies with 5‐year‐olds (N= 144), we find that young children are happier from giving resources to others than from receiving resources for themselves (Study 1) and investigatewhenchildren are most happy from giving. In Study 2, children were happier when they could see the beneficiary's positive reaction, suggesting that empathizing with the beneficiary's positive emotion contributes to happiness (consistent with the concept of vicarious‐joy). In Study 3, children were happier after they gave resources than when they watched someone else give resources, indicating that being responsible for prosocial action contributes to children's happiness (consistent with the concept of warm‐glow). These results provide a critical step toward understanding when children experience happiness from giving and a foundation for investigating happiness as a mechanism supporting early prosociality.

 

Previous research often suggests that people who endorse more essentialist beliefs about social groups are also likely to show increased prejudice towards members of these social groups, and there is even some evidence to suggest that essentialism may lead to prejudice and stereotyping. However, there are several notable exceptions to this pattern in that, for certain social groups (e.g., gay men and lesbians), higher essentialism is actually related to lower prejudice. The current studies further explored the relationship between essentialism and prejudice by examining a novel type of essentialism—transgender essentialism (i.e., essentializing transgender identity), and its relationship to prejudice towards transgender people. Study 1 (N = 248) tested the viability of transgender essentialism as a construct and examined the association between transgender essentialism and transprejudice, while Studies 2a (N = 315), 2b (N = 343), 3a (N = 310), and 3b (N = 204) tested two casual pathways to explain this relationship. The results consistently showed that the more that people endorse transgender essentialist beliefs, the warmer their feelings towards trans people (relative to cis people) were, echoing past research showing a similar relationship between essentialism and prejudice towards sexual minorities. However, the manipulations of both essentialism (Studies 2a and 2b) and prejudice (Studies 3a and 3b) were largely unsuccessful at changing the desired construct, meaning we were unable to provide direct causal tests. The one exception was a successful manipulation of the universality of trans experiences, but even here this resulted in no change in prejudice. The primary contribution of this work is in robustly demonstrating that greater transgender essentialism is associated with transprejudice. 

Studies of gender development typically use binary, discrete measures of identity. However, growing literature indicates that some children might not identify with a binary gender. We tested a continuous measure of felt gender identity with gender‐non‐conforming children, socially transitioned transgender children, cisgender siblings, and unrelated cisgender children. In two studies, we found that transgender and cisgender children did not differ in their degree of identifying as their current gender, that they showed more binary identities compared with gender‐ non‐conforming children, and that the continuum was a valid predictor of other measures of gender development. We also found that children's use of the continuous measure was stable over time. Our results demonstrate the test–retest reliability and validity of a new single‐item continuous measure of gender.

 

Previous research suggests that people encode gender starting in childhood. The present research asked whether gender diverse children (i.e., children whose gender identity or expression differs from that expected based on assigned sex) encode gender. Results showed that 3‐ to 5‐year‐old gender diverse participants (N = 71), siblings of gender diverse children (N = 52), and gender conforming controls (N = 69) did not significantly differ in degree of gender encoding. These results converge with prior research to suggest that gender diverse children process gender in ways that do not differ from gender conforming children, and provide further evidence that gender encoding may be a common aspect of person perception in societies that support a binary view of gender.

 

Early in childhood, children already have an awareness of prescriptive stereotypes—or beliefs about what a girl or boy should do (e.g., “girls should play with dolls”). In the present work, we investigate the relation between children’s own prescriptive gender stereotypes and their perceptions of others’ prescriptive gender stereotypes within three groups of children previously shown to differ in their prescriptive stereotyping—6- to 11-year-old transgender children ( N = 93), cisgender siblings of transgender children ( N = 55), and cisgender controls ( N = 93). Cisgender and transgender children did not differ in their prescriptive stereotypes or their perceptions of others’ prescriptive stereotypes, though the relationship between these variables differed by group. The more cisgender control children believed others held prescriptive stereotypes, the more they held those stereotypes, a relation that did not exist for transgender children. Further, all groups perceived the stereotypes of others to be more biased than their own stereotypes.