Children's Expectations about Wealth and Popularity Status in an Intergroup Context

• In Event: Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Wealth and popularity are salient indicators of social status and guide children’s expectations about behavior, traits, and mental states. Children often prefer to share resources with and favor high status peers even when this might conflict with ingroup preferences, beliefs about exclusivity, or other negative stereotypes. Previous studies have primarily examined wealth and popularity separately, yet evidence suggests that children may confound these two status types. Children may use indicators of wealth status to make inferences about popularity status, and vice versa. If so, high status preference may be influenced by expectations for acquiring economic resources or social belonging. The current study systematically tested this expectation by comparing children’s conceptualization of both popularity and wealth status within an intergroup context.

Participants were 5- to 10-year-old children (N = 156, Mage = 7.72) who heard a scenario about a gender-matched peer who was high or low status (Status Level) in either wealth or popularity (Status Type) using a between-subjects design. In the scenario, a protagonist attended two birthday parties where the host and other attendees belonged to a different status level than the protagonist. Participants were asked to make inferences about the party host’s traits. Within subjects, one host displayed inclusive norms and the other host displayed exclusive norms in terms of their status level. Participants then predicted whether the protagonist would experience positive outcomes at each party.

Analyses revealed significant Status Type*Status Level interactions on participant ratings of the host’s wealth (F(1, 152) = 54.05, p<.001) and popularity (F(1, 152) = 45.56, p<.001). Children viewed high popularity hosts as wealthier than low popularity hosts (p<.05) and high wealth hosts as more popular than low wealth hosts (p<.001). Younger children were generally more optimistic across trait and party outcome measures, and were significantly more likely than older children to expect the host to engage in prosocial behavior (F(1, 152) = 14.19, p <001) and share belongings (F(1, 152) = 12.51, p<.001), regardless of status.

Children predicted more positive outcomes from the party whose host exhibited an inclusive norm, than the party whose host exhibited an exclusive norm regarding status level. Specifically, when participants expected that the party attendees would like the protagonist more (F(1, 152) = 26.59, p<.001), the protagonist would like the other attendees more (F(1, 152) = 16.58, p<.001), and that the protagonist would have more fun (F(1, 152) = 16.58, p<.001). Further, interactions of Norm*Status Type were found for all of these outcomes, in addition to children’s expectations that the attendees would invite the protagonist to their parties in the future (F(1, 152) = 3.94, p <.05). These interactive effects were notably stronger in the wealth condition than the popularity condition (ps<.05). Together, these findings indicate that children associate wealth and popularity status. However, they hold more rigid expectations about wealth than popularity, providing information about children’s developing concepts of social mobility for future research to investigate.

Authors

• Kathryn M. Yee, University of Maryland - College Park
  Presenting Author

• Jacquelyn Glidden, University of Maryland - College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

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