The Impact of Children's Static versus Dynamic Conceptions of People on Stereotype Formation

Abstract

Recent cognitive-developmental research has contributed much to our understanding of children's stereotyping. The present research identified another factor influencing stereotyping — children's theories about the malleability of human attributes. In two studies, 122 sixth graders learned about several different students' behaviors in unknown schools. In Study 1, they judged a school characterized by mostly negative behaviors, and in Study 2 they judged two schools (characterized by either mostly negative or positive behaviors). Across studies, children with a fixed view of personality (relative to those with a more malleable view of personality) made more extreme trait ratings of both the “positive” and “negative” schools, generalized their trait judgments to an unknown student, perceived greater within-school similarity and between-school differences, and showed less desire to interact with students in the “negative” school. Ways in which examining these theories may broaden our understanding of the origins of stereotyping and how to lessen it are discussed.