3-082 - The development and consequences of status representations

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

This symposium explores the development and consequences of representations of social status from infancy to adolescence, to explore how a basic conceptual understanding of social status and inequality affects individuals’ beliefs, preferences, and behaviors towards themselves and others. Whereas previous work has found that both children and adults prefer high status individuals and groups (e.g., Horowitz, Shutts, & Olson, 2014; Shutts et al., 2016), less is known about the developmental origins of this tendency (paper 1), how representations and applications of status might change across development (paper 2), or the possible psychological (paper 3) and behavioral (paper 4) consequences that stem from status representations for members of high and low status groups. Here, we present findings that: (1) 15-month old infants use one measure of status, resource holding, as a basis for social evaluation, preferring to associate with advantaged individuals even when those individuals were unfair to others; (2) young children use gender, but not race, to attribute status to others, with potentially detrimental outcomes for girls; (3) endorsement of status in a non-western setting (i.e. Indian caste system) impacts adolescents', but not children's, beliefs about the immutability of traits such as intelligence and achievement; and (4) children and adolescents choose to rectify inequalities, especially favoring traditionally disadvantaged groups when they perceive there to be large inequalities of opportunity in society. These papers synthesize research using developmental and cross-cultural approaches to examine how individuals come to represent and utilize their burgeoning understanding of social status and societally based inequalities.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chairs

• Tara Marissa Mandalaywala, New York University

• Marjorie Rhodes, New York University

Individual Presentations

• The Have & Have Nots: Infants' evaluations of advantaged and disadvantaged individuals - Presenting Author: Arianne Eason, University of Washington; Jessica A Sommerville, University of Washington

• Children use social group membership to attribute social status to others - Presenting Author: Tara Marissa Mandalaywala, New York University; Christine Tai, New York University; Marjorie Rhodes, New York University

• The impact of social structure on psychological mindset: Evidence from the Indian caste system - Presenting Author: Mahesh Srinivasan, UC Berkeley; Yarrow Dunham, yarrow.dunham@yale.edu; Catherine Hicks, University of California San Diego; David Barner, University of California San Diego

• Social Knowledge about Inequality Supports Children’s Moral Judgments about Access to Opportunities - Presenting Author: Laura Elenbaas, University of Maryland