2-033 - Active and Reactive Roles in Allocation Contexts: Infants’ and Children’s Social Preferences, Biases, and Reciprocity

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Resource distributions are used to establish and maintain relationships, situate ourselves within groups, and ensure the fair treatment of others. Yet the developmental mechanisms of children’s resource distribution preferences are poorly understood. This symposium presents four distinct research perspectives exploring the role of four mechanisms driving children’s resource allocations: social preferences, group biases, reciprocity norms, and prior experiences.
Paper 1 discusses the ontogeny of social preferences for materially advantaged individuals in infancy. Three experiments demonstrated that preferences for advantaged individuals emerge between 13- and 15-months old. Interestingly, preferences did not extend to groups. Paper 2 investigates the developmental origins of racially-biased resource allocations. Results provide novel evidence of pro-White bias in 4- and 5-year-olds’ allocations, and explores three potential motivations for these biases: racial attitudes, ingroup preference, and expectations for reciprocity. Paper 3 examines the ontogeny of positive and negative direct-reciprocity. Across five studies, results reveal that negative reciprocity consistently emerges as young as 4-years-old, but that positive reciprocity undergoes a protracted developmental timeline and is linked to social norms. Paper 4 presents evidence that 3- to 8-year-olds’ experiences with inequalities are related to their behavior in subsequent peer contexts. Advantaged children were less likely to be inclusive to outgroup peers, rectify inequalities, and accurately identify others’ mental states.
Taken together, these presentations discuss novel insights into key factors implicated in infants’ and children’s resource allocations (preferences, biases, reciprocity, experiences), and tell a cohesive narrative regarding the active and reactive roles that infants and children play in resource allocation contexts.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chairs

• Michael Rizzo, New York University

• Nadia Chernyak, University of California - Irvine

Individual Presentations

• The Haves versus the Have Nots: Infants’ Evaluations of Advantaged versus Disadvantaged Individuals & Groups - Presenting Author: Arianne E Eason, Washington University in St. Louis; Non-Presenting Author: Jessica Sommerville, University of Washington

• Race-Based Resource Allocations in Children - Presenting Author: Tara Mandalaywala, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Non-Presenting Author: Kaajal Sagar, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Marjorie Rhodes, New York University

• Negative Direct Reciprocity Emerges Early but Positive Direct Reciprocity is Learned Through Social Norms - Presenting Author: Nadia Chernyak, University of California - Irvine; Non-Presenting Author: Kristin L. Leimgruber, Franklin & Marshall College; Non-Presenting Author: Yarrow Dunham, Yale; Non-Presenting Author: Jingshi Hu, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Peter R Blake, Boston University

• How Experiences with Experimental Inequalities Shape Children’s Behavior in Subsequent Peer Contexts - Presenting Author: Michael Rizzo, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Melanie Killen, University of Maryland