Research paper

what cannot be used for this assignment are web pages, magazines, newspapers, text books, and other books. Finally, current research for our purposes is an article that was published within the last 5 to 6 years.
Major developmental theories across the lifespan
Nature of geographic, gender, social, cognitive, emotional, and developmental factors during each period of development
Developmental factors that impact one another.
Historical and current trends in development
Current trends which may differentially impact the future development of populations in the United States
Social, and diversity issues related to developmental psychology
With the major areas above in mind, focus on at least two of the following age groups:

Childhood
Adolescence
Adulthood
Older Adults

First, give an overview of each article, including:

Write a 2-paragraph summary for each article.
Write a 1-2 paragraph analysis and evaluation for each article found.
Make sure to integrate course material in that analysis
Then, write a summary (1-2 pages) integrating what was leaned from the articles reviewed on the chosen age groups as seen from the life-span perspective. Cover the following in that summary:

What similarities did you find in the types of research and what was being studied? What differences did you find?
Based on your course readings, what developmental theories did you find that were applicable?
Explain how the life-span perspective may provide a way of better understanding the research reviewed.

BOOK REVIEWS

Disability across the developmental life span for the rehabilitation counsellor,
edited by J. Smart, 2011, New York, Springer, 457 pp. + references, US$80 (hardback),
ISBN 978-1-82-610734-3

This book provides an overview of major developmental theories and stages across the
lifespan that would be generally covered in most lifespan development courses (such as
psychodynamic theorists Freud and Erickson; cognitive and ecological theorists such as
Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bronfenbrenner; behaviourists such as Pavlov, Skinner and
Bandura; humanists such as Maslow; and others focusing on moral development such
as Kohlberg). These theories tend to form the backbone of most developmental lifespan
courses. In addition, the book introduces the experiences of disability across the lifespan
in the typical stages of pregnancy/infancy, toddlerhood/early childhood, school age,
adolescence, adulthood early and middle periods, and the older years. What sets this
book apart from other lifespan development texts is the specific focus on individuals
with disability during and across these lifespan stages. This focuses not just on these
developmental stages but also on the various health conditions that may lead to disabil-
ity within each stage, as well as focusing on specific contentious issues that are stage-
relevant. For example, selective abortion of foetuses with disabilities; the impact of
physical attractiveness; overprotection and development of realistic expectations of chil-
dren during toddlerhood and early childhood; siblings of children with disabilities who
are often neglected during school age; disability and substance abuse in adolescence;
parenthood and disability in adulthood; and assisted suicide during old age.

The contents flow logically throughout the book from developmental theories to life-
span stages focusing on issues for people with disabilities, and the content is generally
comprehensive enough for a text of this nature and easily accessible for the reader. Use is
made of text boxes, dot points, tables/figures and reference lists as necessary. Each chap-
ter ends with a summary of key terms to learn, suggested writing and learning activities
and a few pertinent websites. While the abbreviations PWDs and PWODs (people with/
out disabilities) condense words, my personal opinion is that this detracts from the style.
I think people with disabilities would prefer to be called such rather than PWDs, which is
not a commonly used abbreviation and has limited appeal. One aspect missing for me
was reference to life-course theory, which is very relevant to the topic of this book and
the importance of transitions between key developmental stages such as transition to
school (covered very briefly) but also transition to secondary school, post school,
between higher education and work, and post work into retirement, and then transition to
more supported care environments. While not all of these will occur for people with dis-
abilities in quite the same way as for those whose developmental life-course is more typi-
cal, they are important life transitions nonetheless. We know that periods of transition are
challenging for both individuals with disabilities and their carers/supporters and can be
times of crisis during which there is a need for particular service planning and support.

This book is directed at the rehabilitation counsellor but has application to a range
of allied health and social care disciplines working across the lifespan with people with

International Journal of Disability, Development and Education
Vol. 59, No. 4, December 2012, 415–417

ISSN 1034-912X print/ISSN 1465-346X online
http://www.tandfonline.com

disabilities, such as nursing, social work, education, and psychology. While based in
the North American context, the contents are relevant much more broadly.

Overall, I would commend this book for undergraduate courses or graduate-entry
general disability development and lifespan courses for students. It enhances our under-
standing of disability and development from a perspective of the lifespan. It also
circumvents the need for students to have additional medical textbooks of basic health
conditions in addition to lifespan texts, as both are well integrated in this one volume.

Sylvia Rodger, Division of Occupational Therapy, School of Health and Rehabilitation
Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia.
Email: [email protected]
� 2012, Sylvia Rodger
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1034912X.2012.723951

Love, sex and disability: the pleasures of care, edited by S. Smith Rainey, 2011,
London, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 197 pp., £43.50 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-5882-
6777-1

The myth that people with physical disabilities live sexless and burdensome relation-
ships has not been easy to change. Some individuals and some societies remain in the
shadows of unwavering beliefs. However, the author Sarah Smith Rainey now presents
rich illustrations of physically and emotionally rewarding relationships for our
awareness and for consideration. To challenge a myth with such human importance is
praiseworthy. To replace such a myth with truth is more noteworthy. Here lies the
importance of the book Love, Sex, and Disability: The Pleasures of Care.

Sarah Smith Rainey teaches women’s studies at Bowling Green State University
and found the support and strength to complete this book during personally difficult
times. From her personal insights, personal loss, professional activities and research, the
reader gains not only a wealth of information but the privilege of joining in the
experience to learn. To gather data and communicate this mission, the author utilizes
multi-media that incorporate autobiographies written by individuals in disabled/non-
disabled relationships, oral and written statements from participants in the focus groups,
and filmic self-representations. To accomplish this mission, the author goes beyond the
social model for impairment, utilizing focus group feedback data to realistically broaden
the definition of normative sexual relationships and our understanding of relationships
with partners of various abilities and conditions. Feminist, textual analysis is employed
to analyze popular culture representations and content analysis to investigate research
from the applied fields.

Moving from a handed life-script based in despair and pity, the author also shares
her personal account of relationship, evolution, edification for them and people around
them. She describes the following situation that needed to be handled both physically
and emotionally:

For example, it was common for strangers at the grocery store to assume that I was Max’s
personal care attendant. Checkout clerks would ask if I “enjoy my job.” It was inconceiv-
able to them that Max and I could be a couple. Once while flying to Chicago for a family
vacation, the airline bumped Max up to first class without asking if he was traveling with

416 Book Reviews

content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s

express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY: AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW, 2007,

(1), 165–181

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 International Association of Applied
Psychology. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,
UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKAPPSApplied Psychology0269-994X© International Association for Applied Psychology, 2007xxx 2007561Original ArticleCOUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATESLEONG and LEACH

Internationalising Counseling Psychology in the
United States: A SWOT Analysis

Frederick T.L. Leong*

Michigan State University, USA

Mark M. Leach

University of Southern Mississippi, USA

Dans le respect des exigences de cette édition spéciale, cet article présente une
analyse SWOT du domaine de la psychologie du counseling aux Etats-Unis.
Après un bref survol historique, on passe à la description du contexte des
tentatives récentes d’internationalisation de la psychologie du counseling aux
Etats-Unis au sein du mouvement multiculturaliste. Le premier plaidoyer en
faveur du multiculturalisme initié par la division de psychologie du counseling
de l’American Psychological Association est certainement l’un de ses points
forts. L’ajout du multiculturalisme international au multiculturalisme local
semble être une évolution naturelle pour le domaine et ouvre un ensemble de
nouvelles perspectives. On peut citer, comme voie prometteuse, notre pré-
occupation récente pour la justice sociale, autre champ majeur d’investigation
et d’intervention. Cependant, le domaine de la psychologie du counseling reste
menacé comme le montre notre statut de «rejeton» de la psychologie clinique.
On fait remarquer par la même occasion qu’une part de nos faiblesses est due
à notre incapacité d’exploiter certaines de nos activités de première importance
telles que la réinsertion, la prévention ou la psychologie positive. Des soucis
plus récents ont porté sur le déclin organisationnel avec la fermeture d’un
nombre important de formations de premier plan en psychologie du counseling.
Les raisons de ces disparitions sont toujours sujettes à débat.

Consistent with the framework recommended for this special issue, the current
article provides a SWOT analysis of the field of counseling psychology within
the United States. Beginning with a brief overview of the history of the field, the
current analysis moves on to contextualise the recent attempts to internationalise
counseling psychology in the United States within the multiculturalism move-
ment. The early advocacy of multiculturalism undertaken by the Division of
Counseling Psychology within the American Psychological Association is
certainly one of its strengths. The movement to add international multicultur-
alism to domestic multiculturalism appears to be a natural transition for the

* Address for correspondence: Frederick T.L. Leong, Department of Psychology, Psychology
Building, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. Email: [email protected]

166

LEONG AND LEACH

field and provides a new set of opportunities. Other opportunities for the field
include our recent attention to social justice as another core area of inquiry and
intervention. Yet, the field of counseling psychology continues to experience
threats as it relates to our “step-child” status vis-a-vis clinical psychology. At
the same time, it was noted that part of the weakness of our field has been our
failure to capitalise on some of our areas of emphasis such as rehabilitation,
prevention, and positive psychology. More recent concerns have centered
around organisational decline with the closure of a significant number of the
leading counseling psychology training programs in the country. The meaning
of these closures continues to be debated.

Counseling psychology (CPY) is emerging as a global field, though presently
there are only a handful of countries with counseling psychology specialties.
Other countries include counseling psychology but may not have it as a
formalised, legalised sub-area within applied psychology. For example, Leung
(2003) discussed counseling psychology as a profession in Hong Kong though
no specialty area is currently designated. A number of authors (e.g. Barak
& Golan, 2000; Leach, Akhurst, & Basson, 2003; Leung, Guo, & Lam, 2000)
have recently written about counseling psychology in a variety of countries,
and the purpose of this article is to examine the future of internationalising
counseling psychology from a United States perspective.

A GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO COUNSELING
PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES

The field currently has over 70 APA-accredited programs nationally, which
is a long way from the first programs beginning in the early 1950s. Counseling
psychology grew from an amalgamation of specialties, though the two most
prominent were the vocational counseling movement and the counseling
movement. After World War II there was a need for returning soldiers to
find work and careers reflective of their interests and goals. Vocational
counselors were willing to assist at this critical time in the economic develop-
ment of the country. At the same time there was a need for increased
counseling in general, and with greater need for validated treatments.

In order to consider oneself a psychologist, a doctoral degree is required,
though there are individual state laws where a master’s level individual can
be considered a psychologist for job-specific purposes. Graduates of all but
three of the 70-plus APA-accredited programs obtain a PhD degree, with
the other three earning a PsyD degree. These three programs accept limited
numbers of students and structure their programs in similar fashion to
PhD programs, but emphasise practice to a greater degree than most PhD
programs. Regardless of degree, graduates are licensable in all 50 states.
Historically, clinical psychology and counseling psychology practiced within

COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES

167

fairly well-defined areas, with clinical psychologists focusing on pathology
and the medical model and counseling psychologists emphasising vocational
issues and “healthy” individuals having difficulties in problems of living.
There has been increased blurring of the specialty areas over the past few
decades, with counseling and clinical psychologists working and applying
interventions in similar environments. There are still some distinctions (e.g.
clinical psychologists are still more likely to work in hospitals) though these seem
to be diminishing over time. Training differences still occur, with counseling
and clinical psychology training programs emphasising different areas and
researching different constructs, and many of the differences include philo-
sophical approaches to treatment and research. Counseling psychology has
recently become interested in global approaches to treatment and research,
though the extent of interest varies, which will be discussed further below.

It has been long established that culturally encapsulated assumptions are
embedded within Western, US-based psychological theories and practices.
All theories have cultural assumptions contained within them, but US
psychology has historically relied on these theories to explain a wide range
of psychological phenomena, with concomitant and alleged cross-cultural
validity, without considering the worldviews from whence they came.
Because of the encapsulation these theories do predict behaviors for a large
portion of the US population, but have neglected other segments of the
population. However, over the past 20 years there has been a shift toward
multiculturally sensitive models that incorporate flexible worldviews that
attempt to include all individuals and groups in society. These theories and
models reduce the inherent ethnocentric bias in decision-making associated
with traditional models (Pedersen & Leong, 1997). Research is currently
being conducted on a wide variety of psychological phenomena that assess
the validity of culturally appropriate psychological constructs across various
individual identities.

Interest in the internationalisation of counseling psychology within the
US has increased over the past five years. For example, recent special issues
on internationalising counseling psychology in high impact journals (e.g.

The Counseling Psychologist

;

Journal of Vocational Behavior

) have emerged
(e.g. Leong & Ponterotto, 2003), while other applied journals related to
counseling psychology, such as the

Journal of Mental Health Counseling

,
have focused on the application of much-studied US constructs to the inter-
national domain.

In business and industrial /organisational psychology circles, analyses can
be conducted that examine both the internal and external environment as
part of strategic planning. In other words, what is the state of affairs within
a particular organisation or a field, in this case, counseling psychology? The
analytic strategy called SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
trends) allows an organisation the opportunity to match its resources and

168

LEONG AND LEACH

abilities to the environment in which it operates. For the purpose of this
article it allows the specialty area (counseling psychology) to examine its
own system and determine the likelihood that it can increase its global
vision. SWOT is a tool that assists with decision-making and strategising in
a variety of areas within the field. Using a business analogy, for example,
consider a company that produces, markets, and ships a technological
product. Its

strengths

may include a unique market share within a specified
geographic area and the fact that its workers are pleased with their salaries
and health benefits.

Weaknesses

may include its limited geographic shipping
mobility without incurring significant costs through outsourcing, a small
marketing team, and that larger competitors are beginning to attract overseas
markets for greater expansion.

Opportunities

may include the ability to merge
one area of the company with a large shipping company and hire a youth-
oriented marketing firm to increase market share, as the

trend

is to move
toward more global youth markets.

This article will be organised in the four SWOT areas based on recent
articles (e.g. Leong & Blustein, 2000; Leong & Santiago-Rivera, 1999) dis-
cussing the internationalisation of counseling psychology. Information from
each article will be distributed to one of the four SWOT categories, and will
be summarised in this article. Readers will notice overlap among some of
the content areas as they are not orthogonal, and some information may
actually be contained in two or more areas because it can be placed into,
for example, a strength and a weakness area, simultaneously.

STRENGTHS

The Society of Counseling Psychology (Division 17 of the American
Psychological Association [APA]) has the second largest membership within
APA, behind clinical psychology, though there is some concern about
dwindling membership in the near future because fewer new counseling
psychologists are becoming associated with Division 17. In the US, coun-
seling psychology training programs are generalist programs, meaning that
students receive broad training in a variety of areas. Certain specialised
courses or experiences may be included in programs but students are not
trained as specialists such as neuropsychologists or forensic psychologists.
Counseling psychologists serve the general public and work in a wide range
of areas such as business, academia, industry, and the government, and in
agencies such as community mental health, the Veteran’s Administration,
private practice, and various hospitals.

As outlined by Gelso and Fretz (1992) counseling psychology focuses on
a developmental philosophical perspective with the addition of an emphasis
on strengths, person–environment fit, relatively brief interventions, commit-
ment to prevention, vocational issues, the scientific approach to psychology,

COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES

169

and individual and cultural diversity, both nationally and internationally. For
example, there has been recent increased emphasis on social justice issues,
emphasising strengths, equality for all individuals, and prevention efforts
(Toporek, Gerstein, Fouad, Roysircar, & Israel, 2005). Many of these phi-
losophies have been exported to other countries and have been included in
the development of their own counseling psychology programs.

As indicated earlier, counseling psychology grew from and has become
the premier field for vocational assessment and counseling. With the growth
of private industries taking over much of the vocational assessment role,
counseling psychology has not been as practically prominent in this area as
in years past, though we still lead the field on a broad array of vocational
research studies. Consistent with Gelso and Fretz (1992), our competencies
also include multiculturalism, with much of the empirical literature on
multicultural competence embedded with counseling psychology professional
journals.

There has been some discussion as to whether our field has a clear, stra-
tegic direction, and what market we are targeting, largely based on to whom
one talks. Many members of the executive committees and many training
directors believe that the field should continue in its mission highlighting the
philosophical perspectives above. Many others working in the community
view counseling psychology as a generalist training model but often change
their interests, receive additional training, or assume a job title more in line
with another subfield (e.g. clinical, neuropsychology). Our market is broad
given the generalist training and recent trend analyses of the stability of
training programs has received mixed results (e.g. Blustein, Goodyear, &
Perry, 2005). For example, Leong and Leach (2005) discussed the loss of
many prominent counseling psychology training programs over the past
decade, while adding new CPY programs from universities that are not of
the same national standing. Additionally, recent changes in national ranking
systems have shut out counseling psychology programs. Program reputation
notwithstanding, our market is large and counseling psychologists are
embedded in most mental health arenas.

Counseling psychology in the United States is slowly moving toward a
global vision. Three recent presidents of Division 17 of the American Psy-
chological Association (APA) have emphasised or included globalisation as
their theme. Dr Louise Douce presented internationalisation as her theme,
followed by Dr Puncky Heppner who carried and formalised the theme. For
example, Dr Heppner organised a special task group charged with inter-
nationalising a wide variety of areas within the division. Because of his emphasis,
SCP increased its international liaison representation, devised international
lists of counseling organisations and individuals, moved toward greater
incorporation of international information in coursework, and expanded
the breadth of the field. International affiliates can join Division 17 for only

170

LEONG AND LEACH

US$17 a year, which includes a journal, newsletters, and other information.
Joining the division has now become less prohibitive in terms of cost for the
majority of the world. The current president, Dr Roberta Nutt, has continued
the work begun by previous presidents.

It is evident that counseling psychologists and the field itself are becoming
more active and involved in international issues. Two issues of

The
Counseling Psychologist

(

TCP

) in the past five years have devoted Major
Contribution space to the internationalisation of counseling psychology,
and the journal continues to have an International Forum section devoted
to counseling psychology issues globally. SCP have become partners with
the newly developed Division 16 (Counseling Psychology) of the International
Association of Applied Psychology. More individual counseling psycholo-
gists are connecting with the Office of International Affairs of the American
Psychological Association (APA). There seems to be an understanding of
the inevitable movement toward globalising the field, and the

zeitgeist

is
slowly changing. There is greater understanding that the current state of the
field is ethnocentric and psychologically emic, and that counseling psychology
in the US may not be the “state of the art”. Greater interest in expanding
our knowledge from research, clinical, and organisational perspectives is
increasing and more counseling psychologists are delving into international
collaboration. Fortunately this movement has been occurring, though
currently by only a few dozen individuals.

WEAKNESSES

Housing and Work Settings

Some have questioned the future of counseling psychology. While Division
17 maintains the second largest number of members of all APA divisions,
many new graduates begin their careers identifying as SCP members but it
appears that they switch their identity to another area after a few years.
Counseling psychologists typically work in a variety of agencies, and many
who work in medical settings will be called clinical psychologists, or those
who work for the Veteran’s Administration may engage in forensic psychology
and identify that way. Maintaining a CPY identity may become a growing
concern within the division over the next ten years, particularly since some
of the research-oriented programs have recently closed (Blustein et al., 2005).

One of the primary philosophies embedded within counseling psychology
is a developmental approach, and historically counseling psychology programs
appeared to fit well into colleges of education on university campuses. To
this day all but approximately 15 counseling psychology programs are
housed in colleges of education, with the rest in departments of psychology.
Anecdotal evidence indicates that those housed in colleges of education are

COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES

171

often under threat of closure because they must constantly justify their
relevance when many education deans and other administrators focus on a
K

−

12 (kindergarten

−

12th grade) mentality. Programs often have to modify
their training courses to fit with the vision of the education college.
Programs in psychology departments often have to justify their existence
because historically counseling psychology grew from education roots while
clinical psychology has historically been involved in psychology departments.
Counseling psychology programs are often considered the “step-child” of
clinical psychology and given less credence, or as financially redundant with
clinical psychology. Thus, counseling psychology programs are often in a
struggle to find and maintain a home.

Where programs are housed may also help define the professional identity
of the individual, often because outside forces understand counseling as a
subfield of psychology but not as a field within colleges of education. Counseling
psychology has always had more of an identity crisis than other specialty
areas within psychology. Multiple conferences over the decades (e.g. Boulder,
Greystone, Georgia) have focused on identity, though the most recent coun-
seling psychology conference in Houston decided to focus on other areas.

Counteracting Forces

Unfortunately, the field needs to overcome its myopic history, as expounded
upon by Leong and Santiago-Rivera (1999). These authors outline six
counteracting forces to the expansion of multiculturalism, and by extension,
internationalism, in the US; ethnocentrism, false consensus effects, attraction-
selection-attrition framework, psychological reactance, beliefs versus values,
and conformity. First, counseling psychology has been ethnocentric and
Anglocentric historically, limiting the generalisability and validity of the
field itself. Ethnocentrism limits our vision because it consists of using one’s
own culture as the standard when assessing others. For example, little is
understood about mental health issues of recent immigrants and their
relationship to both home culture and US culture, or what has been accom-
plished has focused on broad differences among groups. Ethnocentrism
leads to increased cultural stereotypes and distance between cultural groups.
Rather than reach out across cultures there has been a history of researchers
and clinicians acting independently instead of collaboratively. In order to
both expand the field and not be perceived externally as irrelevant and
potentially obsolete, it is hoped that counseling psychologists will begin to
merge with other national and international researchers examining a wide
range of international issues. As indicated above, there is movement toward
this mentality but the strides have been small thus far.

Second, the false-consensus effect states that we all perceive our own
behaviors as typical given similar circumstances and events (Fiske & Taylor,

172

LEONG AND LEACH

1991). Humans tend to seek out others with similar attitudes, values, and
behaviors, reinforcing that they are correct in their evaluations. This men-
tality again limits understanding of the necessity to examine other cultural
groups to determine the validity of a variety of psychological phenomena
across cultures. Third, Schneider’s Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA)
framework argues that organisations first attract like-minded individuals,
select like-minded individuals, and allow non-like-minded individuals to leave,
creating a homogeneous organisation resistant to change. Organisations
such as these are not healthy and tend to maintain a myopic perspective,
limiting possible outside opportunities. Compared with other divisions, the
International Psychology (Division 52) division of APA is relatively new,
having grown in part from a belief that APA needed to expand its boundaries
and perspectives.

Fourth, Brehm and Brehm (1981) argued that humans counter threats
perceived as leading to a loss of freedoms, a motivational force called psy-
chological reactance. Change means modifying established ways of doing
business which is difficult to admit and even more difficult to accomplish.
Fifth, Leong and Santiago-Rivera (1999) indicated that beliefs and values
differ; the former being conceptions of what we believe to be true and the
latter being what is desired. The field often meshes the two which leads to
a values-belief fallacy, or the idea that individuals operate as if their values
are their beliefs. Values are hierarchical and by extension, beliefs become
hierarchical. These beliefs become very resistant to change. Finally, the idea
of conformity is engrained in most, if not all, cultures. Conformity maintains
that individuals are motivated to assume the majority attitude (Devine,
Hamilton, & Ostrom, 1994). These six forces have a longstanding history
within US psychology, and while many counseling psychologists have become
more involved in multiculturalism and internationalism, old philosophies
are difficult to change.

Journals

Researchers in counseling psychology have a long history of studying a wide
variety of counseling and vocational issues, and are generally prolific. Three
of the counseling psychology journals have very high impact rankings and
are often read by others outside of counseling psychology. It is hoped that
researchers will include more international research that can be published in
these journals. However, there are competing philosophical perspectives
that must be overcome. United States psychology has historically stemmed
from a logical positivist tradition and counseling psychology is no different.
Publishing in some of the top journals often requires strict experimental
designs with a writing style that is inconsistent with many researchers out-
side the US. In recent years counseling psychology has begun to focus on

COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES

173

expanding its research designs to include others such as qualitative and mixed-
methods. Discussions must take place on the controls placed on many US
designs and their meaning for international collaboration. Recently, Dr
Robert Carter, editor of

The Counseling Psychologist

, proposed a mentoring
program for international colleagues wishing to submit their work to the
journal but still in need of assistance to achieve a US style of writing and
research.

Most US counseling psychologists do not express a serious interest in
international psychological issues and are not currently knowledgeable
about research in other countries. Many universities fail to carry journals
from other continents (often due to cost issues), many academic counseling
psychologists fail to receive the same benefits for publishing in international
journals, and most US psychologists are not multilingual, unlike our
overseas colleagues.

OPPORTUNITIES

Social Justice

Shifts in population and social movements present new opportunities.
Counseling psychologists can be at the forefront of accepting some of the
uncertainties of immigration. New worldviews, new expectations, and new
opportunities abound for those interested in understanding and helping
others adjust to new surroundings. Research assessing immigration issues has
increased significantly over the past ten years, and recent immigration
summit meetings validate this growth. These summits focus on the role of
counseling psychology offering assistance in its broadest sense for immigrants,
including its role in political, social, educational, and business settings.
Additionally, CPY has been at the forefront of the incorporation of new
research, training models, and interventions within the gay/lesbian/bisexual/
transgendered/questioning (GLBTQ) movement. A significant number of
prominent researchers in CPY are GLBTQ and they have led the charge for
future counseling psychologists to continue working toward social equality
and justice. The social justice movement grew out of a 2001 counseling
psychology conference in Houston and has been incorporated into multiple
training programs, and multiple counseling-related books have emphasised
justice issues.

The social justice movement stemmed from an initial strength and
continuing opportunity of counseling psychology, that of the multicultural
movement. Multiculturalism and diversity within the US have been a focus
area for the past quarter century, though the past 15 years have shown the
most growth. Underlying multiculturalism is a value of equality and justice.
Multicultural competence has become a mantra in practically all training

174

LEONG AND LEACH

programs and recent discussions within SCP have included difficult topics
such as what training programs should do with students unwilling or unable
to accept diversity as a counseling psychology value. With its emphasis on
multicultural issues and social justice (Toporek et al., 2005), these areas are
fruitful to pursue and it seems like a natural, continued opportunity for
counseling psychology to grow. With values such as justice, it is not difficult
to make the leap from US diversity to international diversity.

Increasing Visibility

Recently, the American Psychological Association (APA) passed a resolu-
tion aiming to increase the visibility of psychology globally, with numerous
divisions focusing on internationalising their subfields. It would be false to
assume that since the APA passed the resolution, then psychology itself will
now become more global. Psychology is currently global. However, the APA,
along with divisions such as Division 17 (Counseling Psychology), has begun
to focus its attention on increasing international collaboration, to determine
the validity of a variety of psychological constructs. We are finally beginning
to see beyond the “false consensus effect”, or the idea that our own behavior
is typical and thus, universal.

Division 52 (International Psychology) has initiated a mentoring program
to exchange information and potentially assist colleagues attempting to
publish in top US journals but whose first language is not English. The
Office of International Affairs is working in conjunction with other areas of
APA to globalise the field. Multiple opportunities are available …

The Evolution and Development of Inferential
Reasoning about Ethnic Markers

Comparisons between Urban United States and Rural Highland Peru

by Cristina Moya and Robert Boyd

CA1 Online-Only Material: Supplement A

Social scientists have long argued about the relationship between ethnic phenomena, symbolic markers, and cultural
traits. In this paper, we illustrate the potential of functionalist cultural and genetic evolutionary models to reconcile
these debates. Specifically, we argue that we must take seriously the role of cultural similarity in delineating certain
category boundaries if we are to understand the origins and development of ethnic stereotyping. We examine whether
symbolic markers—namely, sartorial ones—are privileged in the development of social stereotypes by comparing how
children and adults in the urban United States and rural highland Peru perform a categorization task. We find that
arbitrary sartorial markers motivate generalizations about novel traits in all samples except among US children, even
when they crosscut body morphology, emotional expression, and socioeconomic cues. Unlike children in the United
States, children in the Peruvian sample demonstrate an even stronger reliance on sartorial and work site cues than do
adults of the same community. This suggests a role for early-developing evolved biases that guide learning and require
appropriate cultural inputs or different niches for adults and children. We document further cross-cultural variation,
in that US participants privilege socioeconomic cues to occupational status more than other cues, whereas Peruvian
participants rely on sartorial cues more than other cues, indicating the importance of cognitive rules for learning locally
relevant social taxonomies.

Unlike other primates, humans symbolically mark group iden-
tities and categorize others according to these markers. The
use of personal ornaments, like ochre and shell beads, dates to
the Middle Paleolithic (d’Errico and Vanhaeren 2009; Henshil-
wood et al. 2011), although it is only in the more recent ar-
chaeological record that we get clear evidence that markers
mapped onto important social identities. Ethnoarchaeologists
have devoted much effort to studying how to use ethnographic
analogy to infer identities and patterns of behavior from sty-
listic variation in the material record (David and Kramer 2001;
Jones 1997). The enterprise revealed much variation in the ways
boundaries were constituted, the extent to which symbols car-
ried information, and how markers were associated with other
norms. This work has necessarily been observational and fo-
cused on the production side of stylistic variation. At the same
time, psychologists have been using experimental methods to

explore receiver-side perceptions of arbitrarily marked social
groups (Baron et al. 2014; Brase 2001; Rhodes and Gelman
2008). However, this work is rarely informed by the range of
ethnographic variation in social group boundaries and tends to
conflate functionally distinct social categories.

In this paper, we investigate the cognitive mechanisms hu-
mans use to learn about the culturally structured social worlds
they inhabit. If humans have been using symbolic markers for
much of their evolutionary history—for example, to commu-
nicate about interaction norms (Barth 1969; Wobst 1977)—it
is plausible that they have evolved expectations that such mark-
ers will be informative. We use ethnographic and experimen-
tal data collected from children and adults in Huatasani, Peru,
and Los Angeles, California, to determine whether heuristics
for predicting strangers’ behaviors on the basis of their sym-
bolic markings develop reliably in these two cultural environ-
ments. The results shed light on the likely genetic and cultural
evolutionary processes responsible for our stereotyping of sym-
bolically marked groups. First, we describe a coevolutionary
framework for understanding ethnic stereotyping and how it
can help reconcile primordialist and constructivist debates about
ethnicity in anthropology. Second, we outline competing hy-
potheses about why stereotypes based on sartorial markers are
common and how they develop. Third, we describe the meth-
ods and ethnographic contexts where we conducted the stud-

Cristina Moya is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department
of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University (Peabody Mu-
seum, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, U.S.A.
[[email protected]]). Robert Boyd is Professor in the School of Hu-
man Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University (P.O. Box
872492, Tempe, Arizona 85287, U.S.A. [[email protected]]). This
paper was submitted 18 IV 15, accepted 26 I 16, and electronically
published 26 V 16.

Current Anthropology Volume 57, Supplement 13, June 2016 S131

ies. Finally, we discuss the inductive reasoning experiments
and how they speak to the evolutionary and developmental
origins of social category–based stereotyping.

A Brief Coevolutionary Account
of Ethnic Stereotyping

Minimally, social scientists define ethnicity as identities that
are self-ascribed. However, this does not exclude categories,
such as gender or age set, that may require different analytical
tools, given that they crosscut residential groups. A commonly
implied additional entailment for a category to be ethnic is that
membership is descent based or, more minimally, that it
depends on having an attribute that is perceived as inheritedby
descent (Chandra 2012). Such definitional limitations are useful
but presuppose the answer to the question of how people de-
lineate boundaries, and they do not seem to capture identities
that rely more on performative attributes (e.g., Astuti 1995).
For the purpose of this paper, we will define the set of cate-
gories of interest as those that are symbolically marked but are
not defined by demographic attributes that tend to vary within
society, like age and gender. This working definition helps us
frame the question around a function—namely, how humans
learn and form stereotypes about symbolically marked clusters
of individuals when category membership cannot be deter-
mined from other visible features, like age and gender.

Humans have culturally evolved niches where symbolically
marked clusters of individuals play a prominent role and can
change the developmental, cultural, and genetic selection pres-
sures (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003). This means
that any complete account of ethnic stereotyping is likely to
be a coevolutionary one (Moya and Henrich 2016). In response
to these new social groups, further cultural evolutionary pro-
cesses likely gave rise to shared beliefs about the ethnic bound-
aries, children’s learning strategies likely changed, and natural
selection may have acted on human cognition to help children
learn these taxonomies. We explain such an account in mul-
tiple steps, reviewing (1) a functionalist approach to stereo-
typing, (2) how clusters of cultural traits and intentional mark-
ing can culturally evolve in ways that foster stereotyping about
symbolically marked groups, and (3) how cognitive systems
must develop to accommodate cultural variation. We then out-
line several predictions about (4) how categorization should
develop across cultures and (5) the mechanisms that can be
used for detecting meaningful symbolic boundaries. We end
the introduction by describing the previous research on the
cognitive development of symbolic group categorization.

Why Stereotype?

Stereotypes are the result of categorization systems that sim-
plify and reduce real-world variation. This makes it easier to
respond quickly to environmental variability, especially when
one does not have complete information. However, this nec-

essarily means placing different people in the same category,
increasing the risk of errors from overgeneralization. An
individual-level functionalist approach predicts that social
categorization systems carve up the world in ways that fa-
cilitate useful predictions about strangers. Note that these are
often, but need not be, accurate (see CA1 online supplement
A). In contrast, most psychological theories regarding social
categorization focus only on proximate motivations that shape
stereotypes—for example, wanting to maximize the distinc-
tiveness of one’s own group or have positive self-esteem by
thinking highly of one’s group (Brewer 1991; Greenwald et al.
2002; Turner et al. 1987). Importantly, these motivations have
not been robustly documented across cultures and may be at
odds with ultimate adaptive (i.e., fitness-relevant) functions.
For example, it is unclear that overestimating one’s group’s
ability to defeat others in combat would be favored by natural se-
lection, compared with an accurate cautious perception.

Useful concepts should have at least the following three
features: (1) They should balance the benefit of simplification
against the errors this creates (e.g., optimize the trade-off be-
tween being able to make quick predictions about new people
and coming to incorrect conclusions because of overgenerali-
zation; Coley, Medin, and Atran 1997), (2) they should lead
to predictions that allow individuals to meet adaptive goals
(e.g., choosing reliable interaction partners or avoiding hostile
strangers; Cottrell and Neuberg 2005; Hunn 1982), and (3) they
should rely on easily detectable cues to group membership (e.g.,
visually or aurally salient cues). Next we discuss how cultural
evolutionary processes tend to give rise to group boundaries
that meet these criteria for promoting useful concepts.

Evolution of Cultural Clustering and Markers

A number of cultural evolutionary processes can produce clus-
tered distributions of cultural traits across geographic and social
landscapes.1 For example, copying others who are similar to
oneself, imitating high-status locals, or doing whatever the ma-
jority of others do can evolve under a wide range of circum-
stances (Boyd and Richerson 1985; Henrich and McElreath
2003; Perreault, Moya, and Boyd 2012). These learning rules
increase within-group homogeneity. Furthermore, unlike social
learning in nonhumans, our faithful imitation (Lyons, Young,
and Keil 2007; Tennie, Call, and Tomasello 2009), the intergen-
erational accumulation of cultural knowledge (Boyd, Richer-
son, and Henrich 2011), and the functional interdependence
of cultural features can increase the set of traits that covary
along the same cluster boundaries.

These mechanisms produce information-rich social bound-
aries satisfying the first condition for making concepts useful.
The fact that the boundaries can map onto coalitions, social

1. By clustered distributions, we mean nonuniform ones where multi-
ple traits covary. Cultural traits can be behaviors, skills, norms, or institu-
tions that are primarily acquired via social learning.

S132 Current Anthropology Volume 57, Supplement 13, June 2016

networks, or people with different interaction norms and skills
means that they may promote fitness-relevant predictions about
with whom, when, and how to interact. This satisfies the second
requirement of useful concepts. Finally, signaling ethnic iden-
tities can evolve, for example, to prevent interacting with oth-
ers with different norms in coordination games (McElreath,
Boyd, and Richerson 2003). Many ethnic markers seem to have
culturally evolved to signal group membership in larger anon-
ymous societies (Moffett 2013). These include sartorial cues,
tattoos, dialectical variation, and even traits previously consid-
ered to be only functional, like point shape (Wiessner 1983).
People may categorize others even if no one signals their group
membership (see CA1 supplement A), but selection for signal-
ing produces clearer signs, thus making it easier to identify a
stranger’s group membership. This ease of identification meets
the third condition of boundaries that would promote useful
concepts.

The empirical evidence that clusters of cultural traits map
onto symbolic boundaries is more mixed. In examining the social
significance of bead headband styles, Wiessner (1984) found
little evidence that these tracked linguistic boundaries. Instead,
styles diverged most at boundaries of interaction, where com-
municating ones norms would be particularly important for
coordination (McElreath, Boyd, and Richerson 2003). Simi-
larly, stylistic variation maps onto only some ethnic bound-
aries in northern Kenya—that is, those with higher between-
group competition over limited resources, often despite frequent
social interactions across the border (Hodder 1982). Other
broader-scale work suggests that language phylogenies explain
much variation in cultural traits, particularly in domains related
to social organization, suggesting some linguistic boundaries
would predict social norm variation (Mathew and Perreault
2015; but see Towner et al. 2012).

This evidence that stylistic markers are contingently asso-
ciated with social and cultural behavior parallels debates about
the nature of ethnic identities. Constructivist theories empha-
sizing the contingent, political, and constructed nature of ethnic
identity have supplanted more primordialist approaches stress-
ing the deep history of, bounded nature of, and cultural content
associated with ethnic groups (Gil-White [1999] reviews these
positions). While strong primordialism is rare, several practi-
tioners of a culture area approach to anthropology in the early
twentieth century proceeded with empirical work as if ethnic
groups were unproblematic, discrete cultural units of analysis
(Wissler 1927), and more recently, some archaeologists have
been critiqued for similarly static understandings (Sackett
1990). The fact that, in several social contexts, strategic ethnic
shifts decouple identities from norms, values, and other in-
stitutions (Barth 1969; Moerman 1965; Wimmer 2013) and
that group membership signaling is often strategic (Wiessner
1983) led many social scientists since the mid-twentieth century
to reject notions of ethnicity that rely on cultural similarity.

We believe unlinking our understandings of ethnic categori-
zation from culture is premature, as it is the cultural nature of

ethnic phenomena that differentiates them from groups in other
primates and social animals.2 Furthermore, a functionalist ap-
proach to cognition requires an understanding of the mate-
rial, real-world patterns that concepts reflect. This means that
people’s perceptions of ethnic categories are unlikely to be
completely arbitrary or divorced from some cultural content,
even as they constrain the real-world variation that is deemed
relevant.3 An outside (or etic) perspective on these phenom-
ena still benefits from an inside (or emic) perspective for un-
derstanding which elements of cultural repertoires are deemed
important for delineating different social boundaries and en-
gaging in predictable, fruitful intergroup interactions. Recog-
nizing that ethnic phenomena are unlikely to emerge from a
unitary cognitive architecture (Moya and Boyd 2015) also sug-
gests that cultural content may be functionally relevant for
some ethnic processes but not for others. For example, only
a few cultural norms may be relevant to coordinating inter-
group interactions or in-group cooperation. This may help ex-
plain some of the discrepancies in the literature and why only
some traits covary with symbolic markers that are meant to
signal adherence to a subset of relevant norms.

Categorization Systems in Culturally Variable Worlds

If social landscapes have symbolically marked cultural clus-
ters, and if predicting others’ behavior is beneficial, children
should be adept at learning about these. The diversity of eth-
nic boundaries throughout space and time and the fact that
intraethnic social categories delineating roles (Bloch 2016), like
age sets and genders, are often symbolically marked means
that learning mechanisms must be capable of reliably acquiring
a range of possible associations. Much as with language learn-
ing, a developing child has to be equipped with the capacity to
learn any number of social taxonomies that human societies
have culturally evolved (Moya 2013).

Even plastic learning systems require rules to guide devel-
opment. Heuristics biasing attention or expectations toward
common indicators of cultural-cluster boundaries (e.g., lan-
guage, dialect, and intentional sartorial choices) may facilitate
the acquisition of useful stereotypes. However, to accom-
modate diverse social worlds, these mechanisms require inputs
from one’s social environment to develop properly. For ex-

2. Concepts of culture do not even figure in psychological theorizing on
stereotyping. In the constructivist literature, it is more common to de-
emphasize the relevance of cultural differences. For example, in her attempt
at defining ethnicity, Chandra claims that “features such as a common cul-
ture, common territory, common history or a common language are variables
that sometimes distinguish ethnic identities rather than the constants that
define them” (2012:10).

3. As an analogy, consider that color categories are a function of the
physical properties of light and that our perceptual systems dismiss much of
this real-world information, making us think that only those light waves
with frequencies between the red and blue parts of the visible spectrum
exist.

Moya and Boyd Inferential Reasoning about Ethnic Markers S133

ample, even if certain heuristics privilege categorizing others on
the basis of sartorial markers, a developing child would still have
to determine which kinds of clothing differences matter. Are
ornaments or hairstyle part of the marker? This suggests mech-
anisms akin to prepared-learning adaptations may be impor-
tant, making it easier to learn certain associations than others.
For example, children socially learn which animals are dan-
gerous more readily than which are carnivorous (Barrett and
Broesch 2012), humans and monkeys readily learn to fear
snakes (Öhman and Mineka 2001), and US adults readily learn
associations between aversive stimuli and novel minimal out-
groups created in the laboratory and marked by shirt color
(Navarrete et al. 2012). If this account is accurate, some, but
relatively little, experience with real social groups that are
sartorially marked would be necessary to trigger expectations
that other clothing markers will be socially meaningful and
worth stereotyping.

Children must also be capable of updating such readily
learned associations. For example, in contexts where linguis-
tic or sartorial cues are not indicative of important cultural
norms, but religious affiliation is, children must be capable of
updating their concepts to reflect the latter boundary. Not only
is human cognition designed for massive cultural learning
(Henrich 2015), but humans have also likely evolved to be ef-
fective at teaching their children norms (Csibra and Gergely
2009; Kline 2015). Furthermore, we culturally evolve devel-
opmental environments that facilitate the acquisition of locally
appropriate concepts (Flynn et al. 2013).

Deriving Predictions from a Coevolutionary Account

Predictions about Developmental Trajectories across Cultures

For the above reasons, it is useful to study the development
of social concepts across cultures, to reveal both the geneti-
cally evolved heuristics that children use in forming stereo-
types and how they learn culturally variable beliefs. Differ-
ent theoretical accounts make different predictions about the
cross-cultural and developmental patterns of clothing-based
stereotyping. (1) If genetically evolved biases to privilege sar-
torial cues for stereotype formation are at play, we expect greater
cross-cultural similarity between children’s reasoning and more
divergence among adults. Additionally, these biases may make
children rely on clothing-based generalizations more than adults
do, particularly in cultural contexts where adults have learned
that sartorial markers are not the primary markers of socially
meaningful boundaries. (2) Alternatively, humans may use
structured learning rules that evolved for forming broader sets
of associations to learn about the relationship between cloth-
ing markers and other traits. These mechanisms might paral-
lel those that elephants use to learn that certain human pop-
ulations—that is, those with Masai ethnic markers—threaten
them (Bates et al. 2007; McComb et al. 2014), despite no evo-
lutionary history of sartorial marking in their species. This ac-
count predicts that children would rely on clothing stereotypes

less than adults do, since they would have toacquire suchbeliefs.
It is also possible that humans use cognitive mechanisms that
evolved specifically for reasoning about symbolic markers in
addition to a broader set of individual and cultural learning
mechanisms.

Recognizing that children inhabit different social develop-
mental niches and face different adaptive challenges than adults
(Flynn et al. 2013) suggests additional functionalist predic-
tions. For example, while younger children are dependent on
adults to make social decisions for them, they do not need
sophisticated categorization rules. Only as children expand their
social networks do they start facing the problem of quickly
predicting the behavior of potential interaction partners. This
suggests a possible curvilinear relationship between age and
clothing-based stereotyping; young children may have weak
stereotypes about sartorial markers but start using them even
more than adults as they start interacting with others inde-
pendently. A curvilinear pattern could be consistent either with
a prepared-learning account or with children having devel-
opmental niches where clothing markers matter more for
them than for adults.

We wish to be clear that children are socialized agents and
members of their respective cultural worlds. We do not intend
to interpret their responses as the output of asocial evolved
cognitive processes alone. Rather, in the course of learning about
their respective local social taxonomies, we expect children to
bring to bear both the information that they have socially and
individually learned, and evolved conceptual structures that fa-
cilitate this learning.

Predictions about Mechanisms for Distinguishing
Ethnic Symbolic Markers

Assuming people do form stereotypes about others on the
basis of their sartorial markers, what is it about this cue that
distinguishes it from other dimensions along which a stranger
could be categorized? If the fact that the sartorial marker is
a signal—that is, that it evolved to communicate information
(Maynard Smith 2004)—motivates people to infer that others
with the same clothing are similar, then they should also infer
similarity on the basis of individuals’ emotional facial expres-
sions. If people infer resemblance on the basis of any low-level
feature of a figure, then they should be equally likely to make
clothes-based and body shape–based inferences, because these
characteristics cover nearly the same surface area of a person.
If people infer that others are similar on the basis of the social
relevance of their shared cue, then they should be equally likely
to predict others’ behavior on the basis of their sartorial mark-
ers and their having the same intraethnic role (e.g., occupa-
tion). Finally, it is possible that sartorial markers promote more
similarity inferences if these are cognitively privileged as eth-
nic markers that convey information about cultural-cluster mem-
bership.

For this study, we investigate these four cues (i.e., emotional
expression, body morphology, occupational role, and clothing

S134 Current Anthropology Volume 57, Supplement 13, June 2016

style) to differentiate between these hypotheses (see table 1
for summary of cue affordances and fig. 1 for sample stimuli).
Incidentally, comparing how people reason about these cues
allows us to test two other hypotheses. First, markers that are
stable and difficult to fake may be privileged indicators of eth-
nic groupmembership (Cohen 2012; Nettle and Dunbar 1997;
Sosis, Kress, and Boster 2007). While none of the cues we
chose are costly signals, body morphology would be the most
difficult one to change in a short period of time. Furthermore,
morphological traits are often perceived to be more inter-
generationally stable (Moya, Boyd, and Henrich 2015). This
means that, if temporally stable cues promote more inductive
inferences, participants should rely most on body morphol-
ogy cues to categorize other individuals. Second, if very low-
level visual salience is important to categorization, then our
participants should predict similarities primarily on the basis
of the occupational cue, because it represents a larger surface
area (the background) of the image.

Previous Research on Reasoning about Symbolic Boundaries

While some evidence suggests that there are evolved biases
for language-based stereotyping (see CA1 supplement A),
most data on how people reason about sartorial cues has
been conducted while addressing broader questions about
social group reasoning. For example, Hirschfeld (1995) finds
that 3-year-old children infer that characters with similar
clothes would be similarly clad throughout development and
would resemble each other, but only when clothing indicated
the character’s occupation. When occupation was pitted against
clothing color, children responded that the former was more
stable through the life course (Hirschfeld 1995). More com-
monly, sartorial indicators such as color are used as minimal
markers for novel groups that are assigned in the laboratory
(Dunham, Baron, and Carey 2011; Mahajan and Wynn 2011).
However, these data do not show that sartorial cues are priv-
ileged for motivating inferences and in-group preference,
since similar research on the minimal group paradigm with
adults reveals that other arbitrary bases of categorization, such
as overestimating dots on a screen, may engender similar in-
group preferences (Tajfel et al. 1971).

Furthermore, demonstrating mild preferences toward arbi-
trary in-groups does not directly speak to how much children
are willing to generalize on the basis of these minimal cat-
egories. Other experiments show that children are willing to
draw novel inferences about individuals on the basis of their

Table 1. Summary of functional features of social cues

Functional affordance

Social cue Signal Covers figure’s surface Socially salient More stable
Evolutionary history
as ethnic marker

Emotional expression Yes . . . . . . . . . . . .
Body shape . . . Yes . . . Yes . . .
Clothing style Yes Yes Yes . . . Yes
Job location . . . . . . Yes . . . . . .

Note. Each row represents a social cue used in the study stimuli. The columns represent functional affordances associated with each
cue and correspond to various hypothesized cognitive rules motivating category-based predictions. If a cue has one of the features hy-
pothesized to be important, the relevant cell is marked “Yes.”

Figure 1. Examples of stimuli used in Huatasani. The character
represented in a has the following cue values: sad facial expres-
sion, fatter body morphology, geometric shirt and cap clothing
style, and low-wealth rural job. The character represented in b has
the opposite features: happy facial expression, skinnier body mor-
phology, gray striped clothing, and high-wealth urban job. Across
characters, the category cues were, in fact, crossed with each other,
meaning that being happy, skinny, in a high-wealth work site,
or dressed in gray striped clothing were not correlated at all with
each other (see CA1 supplement A for Los Angeles stimuli and
wider variation). A color version of this figure is available online.

Moya and Boyd Inferential Reasoning about Ethnic Markers S135

wearing similar shirt colors and that they do so to the same
extent as they use race and gender (Diesendruck and Weiss
2014). However, these inductive inferences are trumped by
information about similarity on other cultural traits (e.g., food
preferences) when these are at odds with the visual markers.
This suggests that shirt color may act as a placeholder for in-
formation about cultural-cluster membership until a better
predictor is offered. Furthermore, other developmental psy-
chologists have failed to show generalizations based on ap-
pearancealone inyoungchildren(Baronet al. 2014;Rhodes and
Gelman 2008). The study by Baron et al. (2014) did find that
adding labels to the visual markers promoted inferences, sup-
porting other research showing that labeling can efficiently
transmit information to children about the important ethnic
markers in their environments (Heyman and Gelman 2000;
Rhodes, Leslie, andTworek2012).Thesemixed resultsmay stem
from the fact that shirt color is not clearly interpretable as a
signal of group membership on its own.

The fact that the sartorial cues used in much of this liter-
ature are intentionally simple (e.g., shirt color) and often re-
flect within-population variation limits our ability to extrap-
olate from these data to reasoning about more complex ethnic
markers. In contrast, Hirschfeld and Gelman (1997) used more
complex stimuli and showed that midwestern US children and
adults do infer that more foreign clothing styles predict foreign
language use. While children in this sample predicted language
use most on the basis of race and dwelling style, they still used
sartorial stereotypes as well, and …

Why us

Why wait? place your order now