As previously mentioned, infants, toddlers, and children learn from their social experiences with parents, caregivers, siblings, and peers. By their first year, they realize that others have different perspectives from their own. Although not as developed as in later childhood, this ability helps children navigate their social relationships. Often referred to as “theory of mind,” this social cognition is defined as one’s ability to understand that others have desires, beliefs, and knowledge different from one’s own. As they learn to navigate their social environment, children are also paying attention to social norms, such as rules and expectations about behaviors and how to treat others, and gaining an understanding of their social identities, such as gender, race/ethnicity, and, later, their socioeconomic background. In this section, we will examine cross-cultural research on children’s theory of mind abilities as well as how they understand social norms. We will also examine some variations in children’s understanding of social identities based on their experiences with these identities.

False-belief theory of mind (ToM), has been used to examine timing of ToM across different cultures (Selcuk et al., 2023). Although most children acquire false-belief ToM around the age of 4 or 5, some cultures see delays in children’s acquisition of this social cognition due to social experiences and cultural socialization. In cultures that focus on individualistic values, such as prioritizing individual uniqueness and prerogative, parents focus on these aspects when talking to their children and use more mental state talk (e.g., “I think” and “She likes X, but you like Y”) when explaining things to their children. However, cultures that do not use as much mental state reasoning with their children typically see delays in the development of false-belief ToM (Selcuk et al., 2023). Additionally, findings indicate that family stressors, lack of educational resources, and authoritarian parental practices (which are marked by high control and low warmth) brought about by low socioeconomic status can also result in delayed acquisition of false-belief ToM (Sumer-Büyükabacı et al., 2021). Although most cultures include varying degrees of individualistic and collectivistic values, families that do not frequently references other’s minds and points of view when speaking to their children may contribute to their children’s delayed false-belief ToM (Selcuk et al., 2023).

Gender

Cognition about social groups also develops as a function of a child’s experiences interacting within their social group and with other social groups. For example, although children as young as 3 years old are aware of their own gender identity and can categorize others’ gender based on gender stereotypic traits (e.g., girls play with dolls and have long hair, and boys play with trucks and have short hair), they have a hard time understanding that one’s gender remains the same when they engage in behavior that is not stereotypical for their gender (e.g., a boy playing with a doll; Ruble & Martin, 2010). This social cognition is known as gender consistency and is typically acquired by age 6 (Ruble & Martin, 2010). At around age 11, children also begin to associate status with different genders, and they more frequently assign low-status occupations to women and high-status occupations to men (Liben et al., 2001).

Video 11.2. “Gender.mov” by drmpcfl. 

Race

Children from different races, ethnicities, and cultures are often socialized about their race, ethnicity, and culture by their parents. In the United States, children first become aware of their race/ethnicity and can categorize themselves into their race/ethnicity at age 5. However, these findings primarily apply to racially/ethnically minoritized children in the United States, as majority White or European American children have a harder time categorizing themselves as White or European American because their higher social status means their racial identity is not as primed or made as salient as that of minoritized identities (Hazelbaker & Mistry, 2022). Additionally, minoritized children as young as 8 years are highly attuned to stereotypes about their social groups and more so than their White counterparts (Gillien-O’Neel et al., 2011). Sometimes these stereotypes can have a negative impact on children’s academic performance (McKown & Weinstein, 2003). As they age, children develop a growing affiliation with their racial and ethnic groups and begin to see their racial and ethnic identity as an important part of who they are (Rogers & Meltzoff, 2017). Additionally, children ages 5 to 13 years consider their gender identity to be more important to them than their racial identity. However, compared to White American children, Black American children place a higher importance on their racial identity (Rogers & Meltzoff, 2017). These findings indicate that children from different racial and ethnic backgrounds think about social categories and what they mean to them differently. Often, these differences are steeped not only in children’s experiences as members of social groups, but also in their consciousness about the status, stereotypes, and biases associated with these social categories.

Video 11.3. “4- to 6-Year-Olds Review Dolls Of Different Skin Colours | Regardless Of Race “ by CNA Insider. 

Social Status

Children also become aware of their social status as it relates to their family’s income level. Studies involving 4- to 7-year-old children show that young children over-inflate their income status when asked to place their families on a rope, where people at the top of the rope have a lot of resources and money, and people at the bottom of the rope have no or few resources and little money (Mandalaywala et al., 2020). Recent research shows that children between the ages of 8 and 12 years use comparisons and markers related to income level, lifestyle, and money when selecting their subjective social status (SSS; Ackerman & Elenbaas, 2024), which is an individual’s understanding of their socioeconomic status or their standing in society relative to others (Adler et al., 2000). According to Ackerman and Elenbaas (2024), children identify with others of their SSS ingroup (i.e., similar SSS), but those with high SSS identify more strongly with their ingroup. Despite this ingroup identification bias, children did not express a preference for hanging out with their ingroup SSS peers. In fact, they were open to hanging out with peers of a different SSS, but they were less likely to like outgroup peers who had a higher SSS (Ackerman & Elenbaas, 2024).

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, an individual’s social cognitions about their own social groups and other social groups can impact their peer relationships. This also applies to their ToM abilities. Some findings suggest that children have an even harder time understanding the point of view of someone from a different cultural group (Selcuk et al., 2023). What this means is that, although children might have acquired ToM when trying to understand the mental states of people who are members of their own cultural group, they may experience some difficulty in understanding the mental states of those from a different cultural group (Rhodes & Wellman, 2017). This has been examined in young children in the United Kingdom and the United States and in young adolescents in Turkey (McLoughlin & Over, 2017; Glidden et al., 2021; Gonultas et al., 2020). What this research also highlights is that group membership factors, such as high levels of ingroup identification and perceptions of threat of the outgroup, can interfere with ToM accuracy for members of a different cultural group than one’s own (Selcuk et al., 2023).

Although children prefer peers who are similar to them in gender, race, ethnicity, and age (Bukowski et al., 2018), they are more likely to engage with others or make friends with peers who are different from them if they have more contact with children from different social groups (Beelmann & Heinemann, 2014). Contact with people of diverse backgrounds increases children’s empathy toward and perspective taking of peers from different social groups. Of course, contact should be positive, because negative experiences with outgroups can perpetuate negative stereotypes and heighten feelings of outgroup threat (Tropp & Prenovost, 2008; McKeown et al., 2025).