Mutual intentions as a causal framework for social groups

Abstract

Children’s early emerging intuitive theories are specialized for different conceptual domains. Recently attention has turned to children’s concepts of social groups, finding that children believe that many social groups mark uniquely social information such as allegiances and obligations. But another critical component of intuitive theories, the causal beliefs that underlie category membership, has received less attention. We propose that children believe membership in these groups is constituted by mutual intentions: i.e., all group members (including the individual) intend for an individual to be a member and all group members (including the individual) have common knowledge of these intentions. Children in a broad age range (4–9) applied a mutual-intentional framework to newly encountered social groups early in development (Experiment 1, 2, 4). Further, they deploy this mutual-intentional framework selectively, withholding it from essentialized social categories such as gender (Experiment 3). Mutual intentionality appears to be a vital aspect of children’s naïve sociology.