To investigate whether adolescents approve of disobedience or lying in response to rules that restrict behavior based on gender, 89 younger (M[subscript age] = 11.74) and older (M[subscript age] = 16.67) adolescents and emerging adults (M[subscript age] = 19.97) judged vignettes wherein a child prefers an activity, but the child's parents indicate…

There are conflicting findings regarding the development of essentialist beliefs about social categories. The present studies address these findings by differentiating between the developments of the relative versus absolute essentialist status of categories. Participants were Israeli Secular Jewish and Muslim Arab kindergarteners, second graders,…

Two studies examined how 3-6-year-olds understand the process of learning. In study 1 examined how children spontaneously talk about learning via a CHILDES language analysis. Talk about the learning process increased between the ages of 3-5. Talk specifically about learning in terms of desire decreased during this period. This suggests the…