Do Children View Social Status in Essentialist Terms?

• In Event: 2-081 - New Directions in Social Essentialism Research

Integrative Statement

Children sometimes view members of a social category as sharing an underlying essence. These essentialist beliefs can lead people to view category membership as stable and informative. Different cultures essentialize different social categories; however, all of these categories share an underlying hierarchical structure, in which certain individuals are deemed higher in status than others. Although social status is an important component in each of these essentialized categories, little previous work has investigated whether people view social status itself in essentialist terms. The present work thus investigates whether children and adults essentialize status, to explore whether broader essentialist beliefs about social status contribute to the development of essentialist beliefs about specific, culturally relevant social categories.
Here, we examined whether 5-to-8-year-old children (n = 56) or adults (n = 90) essentialize social status, using a novel-group paradigm. Participants were told about Zazzes and Flurps; depending on condition, Zazzes and Flurps were described either as equal in status (i.e., Zazzes and Flurps had equal access to resources) or as unequal in status (i.e., Zazzes always had to ask the Flurps for access to resources). We used generic language throughout the introduction to stimulate the formation of essentialist beliefs (i.e., Rhodes, Leslie, & Tworek, 2012).
Participants were then asked about novel status-relevant properties (e.g., which group decides who gets to play with a toy?). Both children (β = 1.47, p < .001) and adults (β = 2.48, p < .001) generalized status differentials to novel properties in the unequal status condition (expecting high-status Flurps to have and control access to novel resources), but did not differ in expectations about which group would have and control resources in the equal status condition (Figure 1).
To assess essentialist reasoning about the groups themselves, we used a switched-at-birth task where participants were told about a baby was born to one group, but raised by a member of the other group (e.g., Waxman, Medin, & Ross, 2007). Adults were above chance in saying that a baby would grow up to be a member of and have the properties of the adopted group, regardless of condition. Among children, however, a different pattern emerged. Interestingly, children in the equal status condition showed a bias to essentialize the group (i.e., select the birth mother), but children in the unequal status condition did not (category membership: β = -1.80, p = .003; properties: β = -2.03, p = .021: Figure 2). Moreover, neither children nor adults expected status differentials to be consistent in new contexts (i.e., when asked whether Flurps would still be in charge if Zazzes and Flurps lived on a different planet, all ps > .10).
Together, these results suggest that although children sometimes view novel group membership in essentialist terms, they are less likely to do so when groups are framed in the context of social status. Overall, neither age group viewed status as contextually invariant or heritable, suggesting that, at least for novel groups, participants did not view social status in essentialist terms.

Authors

• Tara Mandalaywala, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Presenting Author

• Ryan Lei, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Josie Benitez, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah-Jane Leslie, Princeton University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marjorie Rhodes, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author