Korean children’s preference formation based on social categories: comparison between gender cues and age cues

Abstract

ABSTRACTPrevious studies have indicated that young children are particularly sensitive to gender information when making social judgments. The present study was designed to examine Korean children’s choice of either same-gender information or same-age information when they saw unfamiliar objects. All 78 participating children’s native language was Korean, which is less gendered and more age-oriented than most Western languages. Children demonstrated preferences for unusual objects endorsed by individuals of the same gender as theirs but did not show a similar preference when the objects were endorsed by children of the same age as theirs. When they had to choose between same-gender information and same-age information, children tended to select the same-gender alternative. This suggests that gender may be a more robust social cue used by young children than age when making social judgments, regardless of their linguistic culture. Implications concerning the hierarchies of social categories were discussed.