Priorities in social categories

In this paper we review evidence from social, developmental, and evolutionary psychology to raise a common question: Are there priorities in how humans categorize their social world? Are some social groupings more prominent in childhood, and more resilient in adulthood than others? We review and compare evidence from each field, with a particular emphasis on exploring the relative robustness of gender, race, age, and language as social categories. We highlight the value of developmental approaches for characterizing the origins and nature of social categories in adults, and provide suggestions for how collaborative research from social, developmental, and evolutionary psychology could inform our understanding of potential priorities in social categorization. Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Social cognition is characterized not only by our thinking about individuals, but also by our thinking about groups of individuals. Psychologists from multiple subfields have investigated how we detect, represent, and reason about social categories, or distinctions that connote social group membership. In this paper we draw on evidence from social, developmental, and evolutionary psychology to raise a common question: Do some social distinctions carry more weight than others in guiding our divisions of the social world? Put more simply, are some social categories more important to us than others? Developmental, social, and evolutionary psychologists have addressed this question, though often with different tools and methodologies, and sometimes resulting in divergent conclusions. Here we review key literature from each field, with a particular emphasis on illustrating the value of developmental approaches to characterizing the origins and nature of social categories in adults. Finally, we provide examples of how synergistic research in developmental, social, and evolutionary psychology can shed light on potential priorities in social categorization.