Social categorization is a crucial information processing strategy that adults deliberately adjust depending on goals and situational requirements. This study investigated whether flexibility in categorization is similarly present among preschool children. More specifically, we tested whether spontaneous gender categorizations are more pronounced for children with a situationally induced abstract compared to concrete construal level mindset. Sixty-one children first participated in a construal mindset induction task before completing a visual variant of the “who said what” memory task. Systematic memory confusions indicated that all children engaged in gender-based social categorization but that this tendency was accentuated in the abstract compared to concrete mindset condition. These results suggest an ability of children to modulate social categorizations. Implications for the development of intergroup biases are discussed.

社会分类是一种重要的信息处理策略，成年人会根据目标和情境要求进行刻意调整。本研究调查了学龄前儿童是否同样存在分类的灵活性。更具体地说，我们测试了与具体解释水平思维方式相比，具有情境诱导抽象的儿童自发的性别分类是否更明显。在完成“谁说了什么”记忆任务的视觉变体之前，61 名儿童首先参加了解释性思维导引任务。系统性记忆混乱表明所有儿童都参与了基于性别的社会分类，但与具体的心态条件相比，这种趋势在抽象中​​更加突出。这些结果表明儿童具有调节社会分类的能力。讨论了对群体间偏见发展的影响。