Journal of Moral Education

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjme20

The case of common humanity: Towards a deeper

understanding of children’s social ideas

Anna L. Kirby & Paul L. Harris

To cite this article: Anna L. Kirby & Paul L. Harris (2020): The case of common humanity:
Towards a deeper understanding of children’s social ideas, Journal of Moral Education, DOI:
10.1080/03057240.2020.1798745

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2020.1798745

Published online: 13 Aug 2020.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 5

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cjme20
JOURNAL OF MORAL EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2020.1798745

ARTICLE

The case of common humanity: Towards a deeper

understanding of children’s social ideas
Anna L. Kirby and Paul L. Harris
Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Developmental research has long sought to understand children’s Child development; moral
social ideas, and particularly how those ideas influence their judg­ development; perspective-
ments and behaviors toward other people. We examine the idea of taking; prejudice; social
cognition
common humanity, a social idea that has been investigated histori­
cally and philosophically, to re-consider what is already known
about children’s notions of social equality and difference and to
suggest how research in this area might be expanded. We review
the social cognition literature to argue that studying the idea of
common humanity—which combines abstract notions of universal
equality with explicit attention to social group differences—could
substantially advance our understanding of children’s social-
cognitive frameworks. We then discuss a subset of the literature
related to children’s prejudice and describe how the study of com­
mon humanity could shed light on the mechanisms behind inter­
ventions that successfully reduce prejudice.

Introduction
Children’s social landscapes vary, but they all encounter other individuals, groups, and
cultures. In response, children develop ideas—about other people, human interactions,
and social categories—which help them reason and make judgements in social settings.
Researchers have long studied children’s social ideas and the way those ideas are reflected
—or contradicted—by their behavior. In particular, researchers have explored how
children think about the differences between people and about social equality, in an
effort to illuminate developmental pathways toward prejudice and egalitarianism.
One idea that has shaped adult social thinking is the notion of common humanity, as
documented by intellectual historian Siep Stuurman in The Invention of Humanity. In its
most moderate form, common humanity is the idea that all people are fundamentally
alike. Taken further, it implies that all people, despite differences, are deserving of equal
compassion and respect (Stuurman, 2017). The idea of common humanity is distinctive
because it combines recognition of group-based differences with a moral imperative for
equality. Attention to the differences between social groups has often been considered
threatening to moral thinking (e.g., Bigler & Liben, 2007). However, according to
Stuurman, awareness of difference has ultimately facilitated rather than impeded the

CONTACT Anna L. Kirby annakirby@g.harvard.edu Graduate School of Education, Harvard University,

Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
© 2020 Journal of Moral Education Ltd
2 A. L. KIRBY AND P. L. HARRIS

development of the idea of common humanity throughout history and motivates moral
behavior today.
In this paper, we argue that studying the psychological development of common
humanity could advance our understanding of children’s social cognition and the devel­
opment of prejudice. In the first section, we describe the idea of common humanity as
presented by Stuurman (2017), reviewing its historical development and drawing poten­
tial parallels to its development in children today.
In the second section, we describe how the idea of common humanity could advance
the field of social cognition. We review the childhood social cognition literature, focusing
on social domain theory (SDT), because that framework best addresses the components
of common humanity and has been widely influential. We argue that existing research
could further explore the development of ideas—including common humanity—that
combine moral and group-based concerns. Given the prominence of these ideas among
adults, it is natural to investigate whether they also describe children’s thinking or could
serve as a normative tool for promoting certain kinds of thinking in children.
In the final section, we address common humanity’s potential to advance our under­
standing of childhood prejudice and inform anti-prejudice interventions. The contro­
versy over whether attention to social group differences increases or decreases prejudice
could be fruitfully addressed by studying the idea of common humanity. We propose
a new way of thinking about this controversy, informed by the idea of common humanity
and its relationship to intergroup perspective-taking.

The idea of common humanity

Stuurman begins by addressing a psychological question: what does it mean to think
about common humanity? In its most radical form, it is the notion that despite differ­
ences, humans are unequivocally equal. Before individuals can acknowledge this ideal,
however, Stuurman argues that they must reach a simpler conclusion: that people from
different groups share ‘culturally significant similarity’ (p. 7). They need to interact with
people with obvious differences while accepting the importance of less-obvious simila­
rities. According to Stuurman, these historical steps toward the idea of common human­
ity have been supported psychologically by a cross-cultural perspective-taking process
that he calls the ‘anthropological turn’ (Stuurman, 2008). Taking the perspective of the
‘other’ allows people not only to recognize the ‘internal coherence and rationality’ (p. 9)
of cultures previously incomprehensible to them, but also to consider the perspective-
taking of that other. In other words, they can realize that, from the perspective of the
other, their own culture likely appears strange as well. Crucially, the idea of common
humanity is not synonymous with universal equality but affirms equal value built upon
awareness of difference. In fact, Stuurman cautions that:
The abstract affirmation that strangers ‘are also humans’ does not always suffice to pierce the
carapace of ethnocentrism. The plurality of culture and the inversion of the gaze [i.e., the
“anthropological turn”] give historical and anthropological depth to the abstraction of
a culturally empty notion of common humanity. (pp. 552–553).

By highlighting numerous historical examples, Stuurman (2017) addresses the ques­

tion: how did people begin thinking about common humanity? As he describes, social
 JOURNAL OF MORAL EDUCATION 3

inequality and division were default assumptions for centuries (Flannery & Marcus,
2012). Only after extended periods of intercultural contact and collective reflection
could societies widely accept common humanity. In Stuurman’s account, this transfor­
mational thought was not born in the European Enlightenment, as is sometimes claimed.
Indeed, Stuurman argues that a Euro-centric history would be inadequate, both because
of the lasting influence of non-European cultures on the development of the idea and
because of the legacy of inequality promulgated by Enlightenment-era rhetoric (Conrad,
2012). Thus, Stuurman begins his history in diverse, ancient religious and philosophical
texts, highlighting the prevalence of affirmations of common humanity—albeit some­
times combined with denunciations of followers of other doctrines. Stuurman then
moves to medieval ethnographies, focusing on how Greek, Roman, Chinese, and
Islamic scholars perceived people outside their civilizations. Although these writings
are far from egalitarian in the modern sense, Stuurman locates in them the seeds of the
anthropological turn. Stuurman’s subsequent treatment of European imperialism focuses
on dissenters who upheld the notion of common humanity against oppression, leading to
his discussion of the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment. Finally, he discusses
contemporary human rights movements. Thus, the protracted history of common
humanity and its presence in diverse societies affirms its significance for our current
understanding of the social world and the development of that understanding in
childhood.
We can also ask: what specific experiences supported the development of the idea of
common humanity? According to Stuurman, the idea emerged at social ‘frontiers’: when
explorers reached foreign lands or when technology connected groups for the first time
(McNeil, 1991). Because common humanity concerns equality across differences, these
encounters allowed the idea to ‘become thinkable’ (Stuurman, 2017, p. 1). However,
frontiers are also where prejudice and xenophobia have arisen (Said, 1978). Thus,
encountering new groups was not a sufficient experience to support the idea of common
humanity. Rather, the contextual factors surrounding frontier moments determined the
impact those moments had. According to Stuurman, specific experiences that have
promoted the primacy of common humanity rather than prejudice include: the oppor­
tunity for groups to share a goal, form relationships, and engage through religion,
mythology, and philosophy. Thus for Stuurman, the idea of common humanity is
supported by the experience of difference as well as the experience of collaboration,
exchange, and intellectual engagement.
Finally, Stuurman cautions against assuming that an acceptance of common humanity
will necessarily generate egalitarian behaviors. Most contemporary societies explicitly
accept some idea of a common humanity (UNESCO, 1949), yet inequality and injustice
remain. This is not a paradox; explicitly accepting a moral idea is not the same as
embodying that idea in behavior (e.g., Batson et al., 1997). In some cases, common
humanity is superseded by competing pressures for survival or power; in others, people
may not realize how their actions contradict their ideals. Thus, Stuurman does not
position the idea of common humanity as a singular or sufficient motivation of human
social development, but as a profoundly influential idea that interacts with other ways of
thinking.
Stuurman’s account is a work of intellectual history, and as such it cannot directly
inform conclusions about the development of children today. However, although this is
4 A. L. KIRBY AND P. L. HARRIS

an unconventional source to inform human development research, it is also a rich one. If

an idea emerges on a societal level, many individuals have already developed the
psychological capacity or motivation to engage with it. Moreover, ideas that remain
influential in our collective consciousness must be supported by cognitive development
during childhood, and in turn influence the development of children exposed to them.
This phenomenon is evident in research into the development of children’s ideas within
social programs (e.g., in the realm of social ideas: the Just Community interventions
[Oser et al., 2008], Child Development Project interventions [Solomon et al., 1988], and
various Social Emotional Learning interventions [e.g.; Jones & Bouffard, 2012]).
However, excepting the study of these and similar programs, there is a tendency in
developmental psychology to separate the study of individual cognition from the study of
how that cognition manifests in societies, which sacrifices the opportunity for a fuller
understanding of human thought.
Contrary to this separatist tendency, parallels have successfully been drawn between
the development of ideas in history and in the minds of young children, notably
regarding the development of scientific concepts (Carey, 2009) as well as reasoning
about the difference between historical and fictional narratives (Corriveau et al., 2009).
Stuurman’s conception of common humanity offers an important opportunity to extend
these comparisons to social ideas, and thus we use it as a lens to reconsider the social
development literature and highlight possibilities and questions for future study. With
that in mind, we now evaluate the relevance of the idea of common humanity to
children’s social and moral development, beginning with a review of the psychological
literature on social reasoning.

Children’s social reasoning

What do we already know about children’s social reasoning?
Although children’s acquisition of the idea of common humanity has not been directly
investigated, children’s thinking about related concepts, like social differences and social
equality, has been studied. It is important to acknowledge that much of this research
differs from the historical circumstances Stuurman describes, in which distant cultures
meet for the first time. Instead, it investigates children’s reasoning about people of
different ethnic, racial, or cultural backgrounds within their own countries or commu­
nities. Given these and other obvious differences (e.g., contemporary vs. historical
societies), we do not imply that the psychological experiences of the subjects of devel­
opmental research are fully captured by Stuurman’s work. However, it is likely that many
cognitive processes are relevant in both cases. For example, people use stereotypes to
describe people of different ethnic backgrounds within their communities as well as
people from faraway communities (Hamilton & Sherman, 1994).
From an early age, children demonstrate both a preference for equality among other
people and a strong bias toward people like them (ingroups) and against others (out­
groups). For example, infants expect equal distributions of resources (Sloane et al., 2012)
and prefer experimenters who enact equal distributions (Geraci & Surian, 2011). By
preschool, children enact equal distributions between third-parties (Schmidt et al., 2016),
and by middle childhood, children’s aversion to inequality is so strong that they choose to
 JOURNAL OF MORAL EDUCATION 5

discard resources rather than distribute them unequally (Shaw & Olson, 2012). However,
children also demonstrate biases toward their own social groups. Even three-month-olds
prefer to look at own-race faces (Kelly et al., 2005) and five- and six-month-olds prefer to
look at, and accept toys from, native language speakers (Kinzler et al., 2007). With age,
this bias manifests as a preference for ingroup members as friends (Beißert et al., 2019;
Kinzler & Spelke, 2011), and a tendency to favor ingroup members when sharing
resources (e.g., Fehr et al., 2008).
Early theorists of children’s social development adopted a stage-based approach,
illustrated by Lawrence Kohlberg’s (1971) stages of moral development, which sought
to illuminate the development of social reasoning as the core of moral functioning. While
later scholars continued to focus on reasoning, they turned to more domain specific
theories, highlighting the simultaneous development of multiple reasoning systems.
Influential among these has been social domain theory (SDT), which posits that children’s
social judgments—and subsequently, their behaviors—are guided by distinct normative
domains that develop independently. The moral domain includes ideas about fairness
and the welfare of others, whereas the social-conventional domain concerns norms that
promote group functioning (Turiel, 1983). Children are sensitive to the difference
between moral and conventional knowledge, judging moral obligations to be more
universally-applicable and unalterable than conventional norms. Nevertheless, although
the domains can be conceptually differentiated, social situations often involve both moral
and conventional issues, requiring children to coordinate reasoning strategies across
domains (Smetana, 1981; Turiel, 1983).
Empirical research has illustrated how children draw upon ideas in the moral and
social-conventional domains to varying degrees when making social judgments. For
example, Theimer et al. (2001) found that given a choice between inclusion or exclusion,
children typically choose to include members of the opposite gender even in gender-
stereotypical activities (e.g., doll-play or soccer), reasoning that excluding them would be
unfair. However, when additional considerations are added—for example, if spots in the
activity are limited—many children choose to exclude gender outgroup members, rea­
soning that inclusion would impair group functioning. Conversely, children who initially
chose to exclude outgroup members based on social-conventional reasoning changed
their decisions when prompted to consider a moral argument, indicating that the two
lines of reasoning can lead to different social judgments within the same context (Killen
et al., 2001). Children also consider distinct moral and social-conventional arguments
when allocating resources (Cooley & Killen, 2015) and making judgements about indi­
vidual rights (Helwig & Turiel, 2002).
Recent research has provided two major insights in our understanding of domain-
specific social cognition. First, children’s social reasoning is influenced by contextual
factors, including contact with outgroup members, norms of their group, and perception
of outgroup threat. Contact with outgroup members has been discussed as a means for
reducing prejudice for decades. Allport’s contact hypothesis asserted that positive inter­
group interactions and friendships reduce intergroup bias (Allport, 1954); this has been
supported by evidence in varied contexts (e.g., Lemmer & Wagner, 2015). Recent
research, however, has connected intergroup contact to social reasoning as well as
prejudice, showing, for example, that children who report more intergroup contact are
less likely to use conventional reasoning to justify exclusion (Crystal et al., 2008).
6 A. L. KIRBY AND P. L. HARRIS

Additionally, children are influenced by social messages, including both anti- and pro-
prejudice social norms and messages about the potential threat of outgroup members
(Rutland et al., 2010). Indeed, feelings of threat play a particularly large role in social
reasoning about immigrants and refugees (Gönültaş & Mulvey, 2019; Nshom &
Croucher, 2017). For example, the relationship between Dutch majority students’ contact
with Muslim immigrant classmates and their attitudes toward those classmates was
mediated by perceived outgroup threat (Vedder et al., 2017).
The second contribution of recent research is a focus not only on reasoning domains
but also on children’s own group identification. The social reasoning developmental
(SRD) perspective (Rutland et al., 2010) combines SDT with social identity theory,
a social psychological framework showing that individuals develop affiliations with
their own social groups, which often result in outgroup prejudice (Tajfel & Turner,
1986). As social identity theory predicts, SRD research finds that strong group identifica­
tion in children predicts social-conventional (rather than moral) reasoning and biased
social judgments. For example, Abrams et al. (2008) found that children’s ingroup
identification predicts greater use of group-based criteria for exclusion.
In sum, a plausible overall interpretation of the research on domain-specific social
reasoning is that children can use broad, decontextualized notions of fairness and
equality (i.e., prototypical ‘moral’ ideas in SDT) in reasoning about simple situations,
but when faced with the complexities of the real world they often sacrifice moral ideals to
promote ingroup functioning or follow group norms. In support of this perspective,
Helwig has noted that we underestimate children’s capacity for moral thought because
their most sophisticated ideas are obscured when we seek to elicit them in situations with
competing pressures (Helwig, 1998).
Although these results establish that children draw on different types of social ideas
and actively switch between reasoning domains while making social judgments, it seems
implausible that the categories of ideas constructed by these models can account for all of
the social ideas children may entertain. To date, scholars have tended to accept the notion
that children view all ‘moral’ ideas as universally applicable. Indeed, SDT argues that
moral ideas are special precisely because children perceive them as applying to everyone,
in all situations (Turiel, 1983). With important exceptions, this view is often extended to
the assumption that in the realm of moral ideas, acknowledging differences between
groups is irrelevant or even harmful. Ideas that explicitly recognize group differences
have been discussed almost exclusively in relation to the social-conventional domain or
the dangers of group identification. Thus, contrary to the thrust of Stuurman’s analysis,
the recognition of group differences is not typically seen as promoting the acceptance of
moral principles.
One notable exception to this pattern is recent research investigating children’s
understanding of social equity. Equity refers to fairness in circumstances involving
individuals or groups with differing merits or needs, or pre-existing inequalities in
resources, privileges, or opportunities—making it a moral imperative which requires
awareness of differences. Several studies have shown that even 5-year-olds can make
social judgments reflecting an awareness of equity, for example, by choosing to share
more resources with ‘poor’ than ‘rich’ others (Paulus, 2014), and by evaluating unequal
distributions favoring members of previously disadvantaged groups as fairer than the
reverse (Rizzo & Killen, 2016). Because the targets of resource allocation in these studies
 JOURNAL OF MORAL EDUCATION 7

were individuals, it is unclear whether participants used information about individual

differences or group differences (i.e., membership in social classes). However, a study by
Elenbaas and Killen (2016) shows that children’s reasoning about equity can be extended
to social groups. Children evaluated unequal distributions of resources favoring either
historically advantaged or disadvantaged racial groups, distributed resources between
those groups, and indicated their awareness of historic racial inequalities; older elemen­
tary school children were both increasingly aware of disparities between racial groups
and increasingly likely to use that information to make moral judgments (Elenbaas &
Killen, 2016). This research indicates that children’s moral judgments can be informed,
rather than undermined, by acknowledging differences between groups.

What does common humanity add to our framework for childhood social
cognition?
Unlike SDT research, the equity research discussed above suggests that children are able
to reason using ideas that bridge moral and group-based thought. This brings us back to
the idea of common humanity, which also bridges those two reasoning domains. As
discussed above, in SDT terms common humanity is a moral idea, because it relates to
fairness and wellbeing rather than group functioning. However, unlike ideas such as
‘fairness’ or ‘equality,’ which only highlight group similarities, common humanity
requires an understanding of the differences between groups. Research has scarcely
begun to explore how children develop and use these domain-bridging ideas and what
that might mean about their social reasoning more broadly. Thus, research drawing on
the idea of common humanity could significantly advance our collective understanding.
This research could take two forms. First, researchers could investigate whether the
idea of common humanity captures elements of children’s thinking. We know—thanks
in part to Stuurman’s (2017) work—that common humanity has played an important
role in adult thinking across diverse societies, shaping global events like the work of the
United Nations (Mertus, 2005), influencing the overarching narratives of the social
sciences (e.g., Montagu, 1942), and inspiring countless activist and human rights move­
ments (e.g., women’s, LGBTQ, indigenous, disability rights, etc.). However, we do not
know whether and how the idea of common humanity emerges in childhood. This
question could be addressed through qualitative studies of children’s reasoning
in situations in which social differences are salient—for example, when children engage
with new social groups. If the idea of common humanity does capture a key aspect of
children’s thinking, we could then investigate whether there are certain experiences that
promote such thinking. Although we cannot know whether these would be similar to the
experiences that supported the emergence of the idea historically, we might hypothesize
—based on Stuurman’s work—that relevant factors include exposure to social diversity,
positive interactions with outgroups, and engagement with philosophical or religious
ideas (Stuurman, 2017).
Research could also address the normative value of the idea of common humanity.
Even if children do not ordinarily develop a full conception of common humanity
independently, might its development be advanced with adult scaffolding? Would the
idea then influence children’s social reasoning or judgments? These questions could be
investigated through studies that prime children to think about common humanity,
8 A. L. KIRBY AND P. L. HARRIS

including interventions that scaffold the development of the idea over time. Arguably,
presenting an idea like common humanity, which combines characteristics of ideas that
are often distinct, would confuse children. On the other hand, it might provide more
useful moral guidance for children than abstract (i.e., broad and decontextualized) ideas
like ‘fairness,’ because it acknowledges the differences children encounter in the social
world.

Childhood prejudice
What do we already know about childhood prejudice?
If children do—or could—use the idea of common humanity in their social reasoning, it
would have implications for developmental theory, as discussed above. But for many
researchers, an important goal of social reasoning research is not only to build theory, but
to promote a less prejudiced, more egalitarian world. In this section we discuss how the
idea of common humanity might illuminate prejudice-reduction mechanisms and
interventions.
The literature on ‘prejudice’ includes research on negative beliefs and feelings, dis­
criminatory language, and behaviors such as exclusion or unequal treatment based on
group membership (Aboud et al., 2012). Thus, prejudice has behavioral and attitudinal
components, and many of the behavioral components (exclusion, unequal treatment,
etc.) are related to research on social reasoning. Accordingly, researchers have suggested
that prejudice be investigated ‘in the context of social-cognitive development’ (Rutland
et al., 2010, p. 279).
Given the social reasoning literature reviewed earlier, an initially plausible approach to
reducing prejudice is to encourage moral (rather than social-conventional) thinking, i.e.,
promoting ideas about universal similarity, rather than group-based differences.
However, recent interventions have proved more effective when they focus on both
group-based differences and broader commonalities. For example, Cameron et al.
(2006) compared three versions of a six-week intervention intended to reduce prejudice
toward refugees in British children. In all three versions, participants heard stories about
a friendship between a British child and a refugee child (representing a vicarious version
of Allport’s [1954] contact hypothesis). One set of stories focused only on the individual
characteristics of each child, assuming that prejudice would be reduced by erasing group
identities. The second set highlighted a common ingroup identity (Gaertner et al., 1993)
that the children shared (i.e., they went to the same school), assuming that prejudice
would be reduced by making children’s social categories more inclusive. Finally, a third
set reflected a perspective called dual identity theory (Gonzalez & Brown, 2003). It
emphasized both their non-shared identity (i.e., one child was British and the other
was a refugee) and their shared identity, assuming that prejudice would be reduced by
recognizing their group identities but then moving beyond them to salient
commonalities.
All three interventions decreased children’s prejudice toward refugees, as indexed by
the way refugees were described and by children’s desire to spend time with them, but the
intervention emphasizing both nonshared and shared identities was most effective. Two
similar studies focusing on children’s prejudice toward individuals with disabilities
 JOURNAL OF MORAL EDUCATION 9

extended this finding, showing that this type of intervention can be successful even when
only a non-shared identity is emphasized (Cameron & Rutland, 2006).
By highlighting how recognition of group differences may support rather than com­
pete with moral reasoning, these interventions support intergroup contact theory
(Hewstone & Brown, 1986). Refining Allport’s (1954) contact hypothesis, intergroup
contact theory specifies that contact with outgroup members decreases prejudice only
when group identities are salient and outgroup members are perceived as typical within
their group. When intergroup differences are erased, contact may reduce prejudice
toward an individual, but not toward other outgroup members. The individual will
instead be seen as an exception. Early research supported the theory in adults
(Hewstone & Brown, 1986), and the interventions by Cameron et al. (2006) test its
application to young children. However, those interventions and intergroup contact
theory conflict with the tradition of SDT, in which moral ideas are taken to be inherently
universal; that is, they apply despite group-based or contextual differences. Further, there
is ample evidence that attention to group differences can be detrimental to moral
development. Strong group identification can reinforce group-based justifications for
exclusion (Abrams et al., 2008; Verkuyten, 2001), and scholars have cautioned against
attention to group differences more broadly. For example, developmental intergroup
theory argues that when group differences are salient, children see those differences as
more meaningful than they otherwise would, making it harder for them to accept
universally-applicable moral imperatives (Bigler & Liben, 2007). Similarly, studies of
Jewish and Arab students have linked race salience with social essentialism (e.g.,
Birnbaum et al., 2010), the idea that social groups have an intrinsic essence, which
contributes to stereotyping and prejudice (Rhodes et al., 2012). Finally, research into
majority students’ perceptions of immigrant classmates suggests that simply being
exposed to immigrants may increase feelings of threat and subsequent negative attitudes
(Vervoort et al., 2011), possibly because immigrant status is a highly salient identity
(Gönültaş & Mulvey, 2019).
So, when does attention to group differences decrease prejudice, when does it increase
prejudice, and what accounts for the difference? To date, perspectives have been divided
among the major theories of prejudice. Most scholars agree that positive intergroup
contact is important for reducing prejudice but disagree about whether group differences
should be made salient during that process—and, noting the findings of Vervoort et al.
(2011) above—about how already salient identities, like immigrant status, should be
addressed. Intergroup contact theory frames attention to group differences as essential to
prejudice-reduction (Hewstone & Brown, 1986); dual identity theory frames attention to
group differences as useful only when combined with a shared identity (Gonzalez &
Brown, 2003); the common ingroup identity model recommends attention to only shared
identities (Gaertner et al., 1993); finally, developmental intergroup theory and similar
models regard attention to differences as risky (Bigler & Liben, 2007). Research has
provided support for each of these theories individually—making their contradictions
even more confounding—but has not managed to reconcile them.
Experimental studies, like those of Cameron and colleagues comparing the effective­
ness of theory-based interventions, aim to resolve the discrepancies. Similarly, Guerra
et al. (2010), compared the effect of three ‘categorization conditions’ on European-
Portuguese and African-Portuguese children working on a puzzle in small groups:
10 A. L. KIRBY AND P. L. HARRIS

a condition in which the ethnic groups were physically segregated, labeled (the ‘African
group’ and the ‘European group’), and instructed to work separately; a ‘dual identity’
condition in which all children collaborated and a common label (the ‘Portuguese
group’) was added alongside the original ethnic group labels; and a ‘recategorization’
condition in which all children collaborated under the ‘Portuguese group’ label and
ethnic groups were not acknowledged. Prejudice was measured through participants’
evaluations of the competency of each child in their group (of both ethnicities), their
allocations of pencils to group members, and additional versions of each measure
extending the questions to European and African Portuguese children in general. In
this case, the results were provocative because they differed between the two ethnic
groups. The ‘dual identity’ condition was most effective for children of European descent,
whereas the ‘recategorization’ condition was most effective for children of African
descent.
Unfortunately, comparing the effectiveness of theories—while illuminating—only
provides support for a particular theory in a specific context, not an explanation of the
mechanisms by which social-group salience decreases prejudice in some cases but not
others. Further, because the contexts, interventions, and populations in these studies
differ in many ways, it is difficult to compare them with each other. How are we to
determine which elements are crucial to the studies’ findings or explain discrepancies
between them? This research provides valuable clues about the relationship between
group salience and children’s prejudice, but we need a framework in which to make sense
of those clues. In the following section, we will argue that the social reasoning literature,
reviewed previously, can help us to construct such a framework. Further, we will explain
how the idea of common humanity—and the concept Stuurman pairs it with, namely the
anthropological turn—may prove useful in considering the development of prejudice
within such a framework.

What does common humanity add to our framework for understanding childhood
prejudice?
To address the controversy around the development of prejudice, we first propose
a return to a central idea of the social reasoning literature: that children’s social judg­
ments (including judgments reflecting prejudice) are determined in part by their social
ideas. So, instead of focusing on behavioral outcomes by asking ‘does group salience
increase or decrease prejudice?’, we suggest that researchers should probe children’s
reasoning by asking, ‘how do children use information about group differences to either
support or contradict moral ideas like fairness and equality?’ Within this framework,
emphasizing group differences should increase prejudice in situations where children
invoke differences to support essentialist or hierarchical ideas, and decrease prejudice
in situations where children invoke differences to support moral ideas.
To evaluate these hypotheses, we need to consider the latter case: a moral idea that
could be supported by attention to group differences. One idea already encountered in
the literature is equity. However, a more general example—both in the information it
provides and the types of judgments it informs—is the idea of common humanity.
According to Stuurman, the power of common humanity as a moral imperative comes
precisely from its recognition of group differences. In an argument similar to
 JOURNAL OF MORAL EDUCATION 11

intergroup contact theory, Stuurman claims that a ‘culturally empty notion of common
humanity’ (p. 553) is meaningless in the face of obvious social differences. However,
Stuurman goes further, implying that a culturally rich notion of common humanity—
one that explicitly recognizes differences in order to move beyond them—has been
powerful enough to shape human history, consistently inspiring societies to resist
oppression and inequality.
Stuurman’s argument cannot be directly applied to the development of contemporary
children. However, it suggests an empirical question for developmental researchers: is the
idea of common humanity equally powerful for children today? If children have some
conception of an idea like common humanity, does it support their moral reasoning and
thereby decrease their prejudice? If not, could helping them to develop such a conception
do so? The instantiation of an idea like common humanity in children’s minds would
likely require the working through of rich, context-specific examples (as posited in, e.g.,
Piaget, 1971). But because common humanity includes an explicit recognition of group
differences, the idea lends itself well to discussions of specific groups and differences. As
discussed earlier, children’s moral ideas can be fragile in the face of competing pressures;
could working with the idea of common humanity make them more resilient?
Even if some notion of common humanity were a common element in cases in which
group salience decreases childhood prejudice, it would not explain why some interven­
tions promoted such a notion while others did not. Fortunately, our understanding of
common humanity also suggests a starting point for addressing that question. The
additional ingredient that might allow information about group differences to support
moral reasoning, rather than triggering essentialism and stereotyping, is Stuurman’s
anthropological turn, which as we discussed above is a form of intergroup perspective-
taking. Stuurman emphasizes that cross-cultural encounters have the potential for
negative consequences but argues that the anthropological turn has historically been
the key to moving instead toward the idea of a common humanity.
As noted previously, an individual engaging in the anthropological turn begins with
perspective-taking as typically defined (i.e., understanding or imagining the thoughts,
beliefs, or emotions of others), but then moves to a kind of meta-perspective-taking, in
which they also imagine how others might perceive them given this perspective. Studies
of cognitive development indicate that such meta-perspective-taking does emerge in late
childhood, especially in contexts where the perceiver and the perceived have conflicting
views of the same social encounter (Harris et al., 1986; Miller et al., 1970). However, we
focus here on standard perspective-taking as the crucial first step in this process.
We need not base our hypothesis about the importance of perspective-taking on
Stuurman alone. Indeed, the history of psychological research into perspective-taking
provides ample evidence to support the claim that it is central to social development. For
example, perspective-taking is a driver of moral development in Kohlberg’s (1971) stage-
based theory, which in turn influenced Selman (1975) in the creation of his own stage-
based model of the development of perspective-taking specifically. Selman’s body of work
alone and with other scholars (e.g., Selman & Damon, 1975) suggests that social devel­
opment is fundamentally a process of learning to coordinate the perspectives of others
(Selman, 2003), and along with the work of Kohlberg, it continues to provide
a foundation for scholarship in this area (e.g., Carpendale & Lewis, 2004; Elfers et al.,
2008). Meanwhile, empirical research has repeatedly shown that the tendency to take the
12 A. L. KIRBY AND P. L. HARRIS

perspectives of others positively influences social judgements and behaviors, for example,
by decreasing prejudice (e.g., Beelmann & Heinemann, 2014).
Reevaluating the research on attention to intergroup differences and the development
of prejudice, we find that perspective-taking is often present when prejudice is decreased
and absent when it is increased. For example, Cameron et al.’s (2006) successful interven­
tions used narratives, which are known to promote perspective-taking (e.g., Lewis et al.,
1994). Indeed, when Cameron et al. used a picture-categorization task rather than
a narrative, the intervention was not effective at reducing prejudice (Cameron et al.,
2007). In another study, increasing the salience of ethnic differences decreased children’s
essentialism when combined with positive and purposeful interactions—the kind of
interactions that lead to perspective-taking (Deeb et al., 2011). Similarly, in the Vervoort
et al. (2011) study, in which contact with immigrants was associated with negative
attitudes toward those immigrants, the opposite pattern was true for majority students
who developed quality friendships with immigrants. By contrast, studies showing that
group salience increases essentialism or prejudice have imposed group categories through
categorization tasks (Birnbaum et al., 2010) or by using generic language about groups
(Rhodes et al., 2012), without providing opportunities for perspective-taking. While we
cannot claim that in any of these studies, children developed the idea of common
humanity specifically, we do consider it worth asking—especially given our arguments
here—how their reasoning was influenced and what form their social ideas took as a result.
If perspective-taking does encourage the development of ideas like common human­
ity, it may be one of the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of the contact hypoth­
esis (Allport, 1954) and its extension to vicarious, narrative-based contact, since
perspective-taking is facilitated by social interactions and relationships (Carpendale &
Lewis, 2004; Kohlberg, 1971; Selman, 2003). In this vein, Vezzali et al. (2017) found that
empathy (a concept closely related to perspective-taking) mediated the relationship
between vicarious contact and positive attitudes toward immigrants for Italian children.
In summary, we suggest that common humanity is an example of an idea that could
take children from awareness of group differences toward moral reasoning and unbiased
behavior, and that perspective-taking is one starting place for studying why such ideas do
or do not arise. However, common humanity is not the only idea of this type, nor are we
the first to suggest a reconciliation of group salience with universally-applicable moral
imperatives. Writing about adults, Park and Judd (2005) argued that eliminating social
categories is unfeasible, and that we should instead focus on encouraging multiculturalism,
the idea that diverse social groups ‘can contribute to the strength of the society in different
ways’ (p. 121). Multiculturalism is not synonymous with common humanity (it focuses on
the utility, rather than the equal worth, of diverse groups), but it is similar in its use of
difference to support a moral goal. Research with adults has shown that multiculturalism is
associated with less bias compared to ‘race-blindness,’ (Richeson & Nussbaum, 2004), but
results with children have been less systematic (Aboud et al., 2012). Given our argument,
more attention to the applicability of multiculturalism in childhood is also warranted.

Conclusion
As they navigate the social world, children encounter differences in others’ appearances,
languages, and customs. They must decide when these differences matter and when they
 JOURNAL OF MORAL EDUCATION 13

do not. Most of us hope that children will internalize the idea that ultimately, cultural and
other group-based differences should not matter in the judgment of whether another
person is worthy of kindness and respect. The question is: how do children get there?
What kinds of reasoning about difference and equality allow them to internalize that idea,
and how can we promote that reasoning?
In this paper, we have proposed that the idea of common humanity could help us
answer these questions. In The Invention of Humanity (2017), Stuurman describes how
mankind progressed from prejudice and ethnocentrism to a widely-accepted ideal of
human equality. We have seen evidence of many parallels between this historical
progression and children’s social development today. In both cases, notions of equality
exist on a spectrum. Just as societies accepted the possibility of ‘culturally significant
similarity’ (p. 7) before the idea of common humanity, children develop concrete notions
of fairness before grappling with more complex concepts like equity. Additionally, both
the historical development of the idea of common humanity and the development of
children’s social ideas are shaped by specific contexts and experiences. For example,
positive encounters with social diversity and inclusive social messages seem to promote
moral ideas. Finally, explicit acceptance of ideas like common humanity does not
necessarily translate into consistently moral action, either historically or in modern
children. Despite the centuries of moral progress Stuurman describes, mankind con­
tinues to find new opportunities to commit acts of injustice and oppression. Similarly,
even when children have internalized moral ideas in certain situations, they often
sacrifice those ideas in other contexts.
These parallels suggest there is more to learn about children’s social reasoning by
studying the development of social ideas—like common humanity—with great historical
significance. We have argued for two specific ways in which developmental research about
the idea of common humanity could be illuminating. First, as a moral idea supported by
group-based thinking, the idea of common humanity can expand our framework for
understanding how children reason about both social groups and morality. Second, the
idea of common humanity could help us address the question of why acknowledgement of
group-based differences sometimes advances but other times undermines children’s accep­
tance of moral imperatives. We have suggested the following: moral ideas that involve
recognition of intergroup differences (e.g., common humanity) may prove more resilient
and useful, even when children are faced with complex or conflicted moral decisions.
However, for children to develop these effective, moral notions—as opposed to harmful
understandings of intergroup difference, like stereotypes—they likely require opportunities
to practice intergroup perspective-taking. If our hypothesis is correct, perspective-taking
functions like the first step in Stuurman’s anthropological turn, helping children to see
outgroup members as fellow humans rather than merely ‘others.’
One useful line of research would be to compare multiple bias-reduction interventions
that engage children in conversations about outgroup members in different ways: for
example, one that uses the idea of common humanity and one that talks about equality
without a recognition of difference. This research might resemble Cameron et al.’s (2006)
study of attitudes toward refugees, but it would be necessary to not only test theories of
what decreases bias, but also to test mechanisms. For example, a future study could
contrast two interventions that both teach the idea of common humanity, but that differ
in opportunities to practice perspective-taking. There would also be value in investigating
14 A. L. KIRBY AND P. L. HARRIS

the impact on children of engaging in the second step in Stuurman’s anthropological

turn: the meta-perspective-taking maneuver of considering one’s own culture through
the eyes of another.
Given the importance of contextual factors in children’s social development (Crystal
et al., 2008; Rutland et al., 2010), it would be necessary to conduct the aforementioned
research from an ecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). Further, in combination
with experimental research, it would be illuminating to use observational or ethnographic
approaches to explore the extent to which children encounter ideas like common humanity
in different environments and the ways in which they respond through behavior.
Insights into the development of the idea of common humanity have educational as well
as theoretical implications. Outside of academia, parents, teachers, and youth workers are
deeply concerned with children’s moral development. One key way for them to influence
that development is through talking to children about difference and social equality. At
least in the realm of race, ‘color-blindness’ is a popular strategy among Western (mostly
white) families (e.g., Hughes et al., 2006). Studying ideas like common humanity—espe­
cially by comparing multiple intervention strategies—could allow us to determine if help­
ing children to see differences, but to recognize that those differences do not undermine
equality, would be a more effective approach for supporting moral development.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Anna L. Kirby is a Ph.D. student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research
focuses on how children learn to navigate the social world and how diverse perspectives on social
development can inform effective and empowering educational programming.
Paul L. Harris is a developmental psychologist with interests in the development of cognition,
emotion and imagination. He was Professor of Developmental Psychology at Oxford University.
In 2001, he moved to Harvard University where he is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education.
His latest book is: ‘Trusting what you’re told: How children learn from others’ (Harvard University
Press, 2012).

ORCID
Anna L. Kirby http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3397-1108

References
Aboud, F., Tredoux, C., Tropp, L., Brown, C., Niens, U., & Noor, N. (2012). Interventions to
reduce prejudice and enhance inclusion and respect for ethnic differences in early childhood:
A systematic review. Developmental Review, 32(4), 307–336. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2012.
05.001
Abrams, D., Rutland, A., Ferrell, J., & Pelletier, J. (2008). Children’s judgments of disloyal and
immoral peer behavior: Subjective group dynamics in minimal intergroup contexts. Child
Development, 79(2), 444–461. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01135
 JOURNAL OF MORAL EDUCATION 15

Allport, G. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Addison-Wesley.

Batson, C. D., Kobrynowicz, D., Dinnerstein, J. L., Kampf, H. C., & Wilson, A. D. (1997). In a very
different voice: Unmasking moral hypocrisy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(6),
1335–1348. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.72.6.1335
Beelmann, A., & Heinemann, K. (2014). Preventing prejudice and improving intergroup attitudes:
A meta-analysis of child and adolescent training programs. Journal of Applied Developmental
Psychology, 35(1), 10–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2013.11.002
Beißert, H., Gönültaş, S., & Mulvey, K. L. (2019). Social inclusion of refugee and native peers
among adolescents: It is the language that matters! Journal of Research on Adolescence, 30(1),
219–233. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12518
Bigler, R., & Liben, L. (2007). Developmental intergroup theory: Explaining and reducing chil­
dren’s social stereotyping and prejudice. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(3),
162–166. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00496.x
Birnbaum, D., Deeb, I., Segall, G., Ben-Eliyahu, A., & Diesendruck, G. (2010). The development of
social essentialism: The case of Israeli children’s inferences about Jews and Arabs. Child
Development, 81(3), 757–777. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01432.x
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1977). Toward an experimental ecology of human development. American
Psychologist, 32(7), 513–531. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.32.7.513
Cameron, L., & Rutland, A. (2006). Extended contact through story reading in school: Reducing
children’s prejudice toward the disabled. Journal of Social Issues, 62(3), 469–488. https://doi.org/
10.1111/j.1540-4560.2006.00469.x
Cameron, L., Rutland, A., & Brown, R. (2007). Promoting children’s positive intergroup attitudes
towards stigmatized groups: Extended contact and multiple classification skills training.
International Journal of Behavioral Development, 31(5), 454–466. https://doi.org/10.1177/
0165025407081474
Cameron, L., Rutland, A., Brown, R., & Douch, R. (2006). Changing children’s intergroup attitudes
toward refugees: Testing different models of extended contact. Child Development, 77(5),
1208–1219. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00929.x
Carey, S. (2009). The origin of concepts. Oxford University Press.
Carpendale, J., & Lewis, C. (2004). Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of
children’s social understanding within social interaction. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(1),
79–151. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X04000032
Conrad, S. (2012). The enlightenment in global history. American Historical Review, 117(4),
999–1027. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/117.4.999
Cooley, S., & Killen, M. (2015). Children’s evaluations of resource allocation in the context of
group norms. Developmental Psychology, 51(4), 554–563. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038796
Corriveau, K., Kim, A., Schwalen, C., & Harris, P. L. (2009). Abraham Lincoln and Harry Potter:
Children’s differentiation between historical and fantasy characters. Cognition, 113(2), 213–225.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.08.007
Crystal, D., Killen, M., & Ruck, M. (2008). It is who you know that counts: Intergroup contact and
judgments about race-based exclusion. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 26(1),
51–70. https://doi.org/10.1348/026151007X198910
Deeb, I., Segall, G., Birnbaum, D., Ben-Eliyahu, A., & Diesendruck, G. (2011). Seeing isn’t believing:
The effect of intergroup exposure on children’s essentialist beliefs about ethnic categories. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(6), 1139–1156. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026107
Elenbaas, L., & Killen, M. (2016). Children rectify inequalities for disadvantaged groups.
Developmental Psychology, 52(8), 1318–1329. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000154
Elfers, T., Martin, J., & Sokol, B. (2008). Perspective taking: A review of research and theory
extending Selman’s developmental model of perspective taking. In A. Columbus (Ed.),
Advances in psychology research (pp. 229–262). Nova Science.
Fehr, E., Bernhard, H., & Rockenbach, B. (2008). Egalitarianism in young children. Nature, 454
(7208), 1079–1083. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07155
Flannery, K., & Marcus, J. (2012). The creation of inequality. Harvard University Press.
16 A. L. KIRBY AND P. L. HARRIS

Gaertner, S., Dovidio, J., Anastasio, P., Bachman, B., & Rust, M. (1993). The common ingroup
identity model: Recategorization and the reduction of intergroup bias. European Review of
Social Psychology, 4(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/14792779343000004
Geraci, A., & Surian, L. (2011). The developmental roots of fairness: Infants’ reactions to equal and
unequal distributions of resources: Evaluation of fairness of distributive actions. Developmental
Science, 14(5), 1012–1020. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2011.01048.x
Gönültaş, S., & Mulvey, K. (2019). Social-developmental perspective on intergroup attitudes
towards immigrants and refugees in childhood and adolescence: A roadmap from theory to
practice for an inclusive society. Human Development, 63(2), 90–111. https://doi.org/10.1159/
000503173
Gonzalez, R., & Brown, R. (2003). Generalization of positive attitude as a function of subgroup and
superordinate identification in intergroup contact. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33(2),
195–214. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.140
Guerra, R., Rebelo, M., Monteiro, M., Riek, B., Mania, E., Gaertner, S., & Dovidio, J. (2010). How
should intergroup contact be structured to reduce bias among majority and minority group
children? Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 13(4), 445–460. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1368430209355651
Hamilton, D., & Sherman, J. (1994). Stereotypes. In R. Wyer & T. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social
cognition (2nd ed., pp. 1–68). Erlbaum.
Harris, P. L., Donnelly, K., Guz, C., & Pitt-Watson, R. (1986). Children’s understanding of the
distinction between real and apparent emotion. Child Development, 57(4), 895–909. https://doi.
org/10.2307/1130366
Helwig, C. (1998). Understanding children’s development: A New Zealand perspective (4th ed.).
Bridget Williams Books. https://doi.org/10.7810/9780908912964
Helwig, C., & Turiel, E. (2002). Civil liberties, autonomy, and democracy: Children’s perspective.
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 25(3), 252–270. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-
2527(02)00105-X
Hewstone, M., & Brown, R. (1986). Contact is not enough: An intergroup perspective on the
‘contact hypothesis.’. In M. Hewstone & R. Brown (Eds.), Social psychology and society. Contact
and conflict in intergroup encounters (pp. 1–44). Basil Blackwell.
Hughes, D., Rodriguez, J., Smith, E., Johnson, D., Stevenson, H., & Spicer, P. (2006). Parents’
ethnic-racial socialization practices: A review of research and directions for future study.
Developmental Psychology, 42(5), 747–770. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.42.5.747
Jones, S., & Bouffard, S. (2012). Social and emotional learning in schools – From programs to
strategies. Sharing Child and Youth Development Knowledge, 26(4), 1–31. Retrieved from
http://eric.ed.gov/?id[H11005]ED540203. [Google Scholar].
Kelly, D., Quinn, P., Slater, A., Lee, K., Gibson, A., Smith, M., . . . Pascalis, O. (2005). Three-month-
olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces. Developmental Science, 8(6), F31–F36. https://
doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.0434a.x
Killen, M., Pisacane, K., Lee-Kim, J., & Ardila-Rey, A. (2001). Fairness or stereotypes? Young
children’s priorities when evaluating group exclusion and inclusion. Developmental Psychology,
37(5), 587–596. https://doi.org/10.1037//0012-1649.37.5.587
Kinzler, K., Dupoux, E., & Spelke, E. S. (2007). The native language of social cognition. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(30), 12577–12580. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.
0705345104
Kinzler, K. D., & Spelke, E. S. (2011). Do infants show social preferences for people differing in
race? Cognition, 119(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.10.019
Kohlberg, L. (1971). Stages of moral development. In C. M. Beck, B. S. Crittenden, & E. V. Sullivan
(Eds.), Moral education (pp. 15–98). University of Toronto Press.
Lemmer, G., & Wagner, U. (2015). Can we really reduce ethnic prejudice outside the lab? A
meta-analysis of direct and indirect contact interventions. European Journal of Social
Psychology, 45(2), 152–168. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2079
 JOURNAL OF MORAL EDUCATION 17

Lewis, C., Freeman, N., Hagestadt, C., & Douglas, H. (1994). Narrative access and production in
preschoolers’ false belief reasoning. Cognitive Development, 9(4), 397–424. https://doi.org/10.
1016/0885-2014(94)90013-2
McNeil, W. (1991). The rise of the West. University of Chicago Press.
Mertus, J. A. (2005). The United Nations and human rights: A guide for a new era. Routledge.
Miller, P., Kessel, F., & Flavell, J. (1970). Thinking about people thinking about people thinking
about. . .: A study of social cognitive development. Child Development, 41(3), 613–623.
Montagu, M. (1942). Man’s most dangerous myth; The fallacy of race. Harper.
Nshom, E., & Croucher, S. (2017). Perceived threat and prejudice towards immigrants in Finland:
A study among early, middle, and late Finnish adolescents. Journal of International and
Intercultural Communication, 11(4), 324–338. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2017.1312489
Oser, F., Althof, W., & Higgins-D’Alessandro, A. (2008). The Just Community approach to moral
education: System change or individual change? Journal of Moral Education, 37(3), 395–415.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240802227551
Park, B., & Judd, C. (2005). Rethinking the link between categorization and prejudice within the
social cognition perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(2), 108–130. https://
doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0902_2
Paulus, M. (2014). The early origins of human charity: Developmental changes in preschoolers’
sharing with poor and wealthy individuals. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(344). https://doi.org/10.
3389/fpsyg.2014.00344
Piaget, J. (1971). The theory of stages in cognitive development. In D. R. Green, M. P. Ford, &
G. B. Flamer (Eds.), Measurement and Piaget (pp. 1–11). McGraw-Hill.
Rhodes, M., Leslie, S., & Tworek, C. (2012). Cultural transmission of social essentialism.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(34), 13526–13531. https://doi.org/10.
1073/pnas.1208951109
Richeson, J., & Nussbaum, R. (2004). The impact of multi-culturalism versus color-blindness on
racial bias. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(3), 417–423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
jesp.2003.09.002
Rizzo, M., & Killen, M. (2016). Children’s understanding of equity in the context of inequality.
British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 34(4), 569–581. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.
12150
Rutland, A., Killen, M., & Abrams, D. (2010). A new social-cognitive developmental perspective on
prejudice: The interplay between morality and group identity. Perspectives on Psychological
Science, 5(3), 279–291. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610369468
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
Schmidt, M., Svetlova, M., Johe, J., & Tomasello, M. (2016). Children’s developing understanding
of legitimate reasons for allocating resources unequally. Cognitive Development, 37, 42–52.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2015.11.001
Selman, R. L. (1975). Level of social perspective taking and the development of empathy in
children: Speculations from a social-cognitive viewpoint. Journal of Moral Education, 5(l),
35–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305724750050105
Selman, R. L., & Damon, W. (1975). The necessity (but insufficiency) of social perspective taking
for conceptions of justice at three early levels. In D. DePalma & J. Foley (Eds.), Moral develop­
ment: Current theory and research (pp. 57–74). Erlbaum.
Selman, R. L. (2003). The promotion of social awareness: Powerful lessons from the partnership of
developmental theory and classroom practice. Russell Sage Foundation Publication.
Shaw, A., & Olson, K. (2012). Children discard a resource to avoid inequity. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 141(2), 382–395. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025907
Sloane, S., Baillargeon, R., & Premack, D. (2012). Do infants have a sense of fairness? Psychological
Science, 23(2), 196–204. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611422072
Smetana, J. (1981). Preschool children’s conceptions of moral and social rules. Child Development,
52(4), 1333–1336. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1981.tb03187.x
18 A. L. KIRBY AND P. L. HARRIS

Solomon, D., Watson, M., Delucchi, K., Schaps, E., & Battistich, V. (1988). Enhancing children’s
prosocial behavior in the classroom. American Educational Research Journal, 25(4), 527–555.
https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312025004527
Stuurman, S. (2008). Herodotus and Sima Qian: History and the anthropological turn in ancient
Greece and Han China. Journal of World History, 19(1), 2–3.
Stuurman, S. (2017). The Invention of Humanity. Harvard University Press.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel &
W. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (2nd ed., pp. 7–24). Nelson-Hall.
Theimer, C., Killen, M., & Stangor, C. (2001). Young children’s evaluations of exclusion in gender-
stereotypic peer contexts. Developmental Psychology, 37(1), 18–27. https://doi.org/10.1037//
0012-1649.37.1.18
Turiel, E. (1983). The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention. Cambridge
University Press.
UNESCO. (1949). Human rights: Comments and interpretations. Columbia University Press.
Vedder, P., Wenink, E., & Van Geel, M. (2017). Intergroup contact and prejudice between Dutch
majority and Muslim minority youth in the Netherlands. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority
Psychology, 23(4), 477–485. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000150
Verkuyten, M. (2001). National identification and inter-group evaluations in Dutch children.
British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 19(4), 559–571. https://doi.org/10.1348/
026151001166254
Vervoort, M. H. M., Scholte, R. H. J., & Scheepers, P. L. H. (2011). Ethnic composition of school
classes, majority–minority friendships, and adolescents’ intergroup attitudes in the
Netherlands. Journal of Adolescence, 34, 257–267.
Vezzali, L., Hewstone, M., Capozza, D., Trifiletti, E., & Di Bernardo, G. (2017). Improving
intergroup relations with extended contact among young children: Mediation by intergroup
empathy and moderation by direct intergroup contact. Journal of Community & Applied Social
Psychology, 27(1), 35–49. https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.2292