Management Summary Research Study „Children and adults are examples, respectively, of marked and unmarked social categories“

This commentary argues that Lew-Levy and Amir’s account of children’s role in cultural adaptation should be framed within a broader problem: researchers often treat some social categories as unmarked and representative, while overlooking others as marked. Adults are commonly treated as the default category for “people,” while children are treated as a special category. The commentary links this pattern to the “home-field disadvantage,” in which researchers generalise more readily from familiar, high-status, or majority groups than from socially distant groups.

It further argues that age is only one dimension of socially organised peer culture. Adolescents, older adults, occupational groups, minorities, and lower-status groups may also form distinctive peer cultures that innovate and transmit culture differently. The practical implication for research is that scholars should be more explicit about which social categories their samples represent and should avoid treating adult samples as a neutral basis for generalising about human behaviour.

Target groups of stakeholders: Researchers in cultural psychology, cultural evolution, developmental psychology, and the social sciences; university teachers; designers of research methods and studies.

Citation: Bennis, W. M. (2026). Children and adults are examples, respectively, of marked and unmarked social categories. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 49, e227.