Children’s Predictions and Preferences: Giving Priority to Race or Wealth

• In Event: Balancing Belonging, Fairness, and Cost in Children's Preferences and Predictions About Affiliative Behaviours

Abstract

Children repeatedly excluded by peers are at risk for negative outcomes, including depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal. Social exclusion on the basis of group membership, such as race and socioeconomic status, can be particularly detrimental. While previous research has focused on children’s evaluations of inclusion and exclusion based on race, less is known about inclusion based on wealth. Moreover, because individuals belong to many social groups simultaneously, children’s associations about groups may intersect to inform their decisions. For example, U.S. children of multiple racial and socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to associate African Americans with the low end of the wealth spectrum and European Americans with the high end of the wealth spectrum. However, it is not known how these associations might influence inclusion predictions and preferences. The goal of the current study is to determine whether inclusion decisions that appear to focus on one group may also reflect other forms of preferences that motivate a decision.
In this study, children were asked to make inclusions and to predict what others might do when peers were from different (or similar) backgrounds based on wealth or race. African American and European American participants (N = 153, 8-14 years old, M = 11.46 years) made predictions about whether after-school clubs would prefer to include a peer who shared their only racial or wealth group membership (and differed on the other group membership) and also reported what they personally thought should happen. Logistic regressions revealed that, overall, the majority of children expected others to include a peer into their club on the basis of wealth rather than race. However, there was an interaction between participant race and age, both when clubs were depicted as high wealth (β = .765, t(153) = 8.308, p = .004) and when clubs were depicted as low wealth (β = .607, t(153) = 9.152, p = .009). European American participants, with age, increasingly expected the after-school clubs to include a same-wealth peer (even when this peer was a different race) whereas African American participants, with age, increasingly expected the after-school clubs to include a same-race peer (even when the peer was a different level of wealth; see Figure 1).
When asked their own preferences, with age, European American children were more likely to advocate for a match on wealth group membership. African American children, regardless of age, also preferred inclusion on the basis of wealth over race, β = .468, t(153) = 9.152, p = .050 (see Figure 2).
Thus, wealth was a more salient factor for children and adolescents than race when making predictions and forming preferences about whom to include into a club, and this was the case for a sample in which both African American and European American participants were evenly represented, and came from middle-income backgrounds. This study provides novel evidence about the role of wealth when examining children’s decisions about whom to include. Future studies on racial preference will benefit from including wealth status information given that, with age, wealth became a salient factor in intergroup inclusion decisions.

Authors

• Amanda Rose Burkholder, Furman University
  Presenting Author

• Melanie A. Killen, University of Maryland - College Park
  Non-Presenting Author