Social lunch -- Dr. Ryan Lei (Haverford College).

The intersection of race and gender shapes inequality across all sectors of society. As just a few examples—Black men are disproportionately stopped by police; Black women and Asian men are rendered culturally invisible; and White men disproportionately occupy positions of status and power. Yet, little is known about how and when race and gender become psychologically intertwined in our social prototypes, and when these prototypes begin to manifest in the formation of stereotypes. In this talk, I will present three studies (N=551) investigating when and how race begins to bias children’s representations of gender over early childhood, and how both race and gender interact to bias children’s representations of broader social categories (e.g., “people”). I will also discuss the importance of including research with children for advancing our understanding of social-cognitive processes.