The development of social judgment: Understanding others in the context of groups

This chapter provides an overview of the research on how humans develop a tendency to use social groups to understand and judge the people around them. By reviewing evidence that children use social groups to judge others across a range of contexts, it describes findings regarding children’s attitudes toward group members—that they hold positive views of ingroup members and negative views of outgroup members—as well as their more general beliefs about members of different social groups, in the form of stereotypes. It also explores how children identify which groups in their environment are relevant for social judgment, and how children’s use of social groups both changes and remains continuous in different ways over the course of development. Finally, it discusses the implications of this research for facilitating positive intergroup relations.