Meet the Social Cognitive and Development Lab

Here in the Social Cognitive Development lab we explore how children (from infancy through early teenage years) establish preferences for and beliefs about themselves and other people. Through our research we hope to understand how preferences for and stereotypes about people are acquired and change across development on both a conscious and an unconscious level of processing. Collectively, our research aims to understand when, why and how children reason about a person in terms of their social group membership (e.g., gender, race, occupation) rather than by their individual merits alone. This work also focuses on the extent to which a child's preference for, stereotypes about, and treatment of another is shaped by how similar that person appears to the self (i.e., "how like me" that person appears).

Dr. Andrew Scott Baron, Professor int her Department of Psychology at UBC, is the Director of the UBC Social Cognitive Development Lab. Under his direction these labs explore the development of social cognition in infants, preschoolers and adolescents. A principal aim of this work is to understand the cognitive and cultural origins of social categorization including intergroup preferences and stereotypes at both an implicit and explicit level of representation.