Poster #122 - Examining the Association Between Familism and Children’s Resource Distribution Behavior

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

Children’s social preferences can be influenced by several factors including gender, age, and race. However, an understudied factor in developmental psychology is that of cultural concepts like familism. Familism is a cultural value that emphasizes the importance of loyalty, obligation, and support towards the family (Stein et al., 2014). Familism has primarily been studied in Hispanic/Latinx families and serves as a protective factor against deviant peer exposure, interpersonal violence, and cigarette use among Latinx youth (German et al., 2009). In addition, behaviors consistent with familism promote psychological adjustment (Stein et al., 2015) and has been associated with prosocial behaviors (Hernandez & Bamaca-Colbert, 2016).

Because studies of familism often use survey methods, prior research has focused on adolescents and adults, yet children may begin to manifest familial values in the form of behavior and are developing a sense of obligation and loyalty towards the family. Several studies show that children reflect on social considerations (Decety et al., 2021; DeJesus et al., 2014; Killen et al., 2006; Rutland et al., 2010; Smetana et al., 1991), including family members (Olson & Spelke, 2008; Spokes & Spelke, 2016), when distributing resources. This is consistent with familism questionnaires, with items such as “A person should help his or her elderly parents in time of need, for example, help financially or share a house”. Studies of cultural differences in resource distribution have examined differences at the group level (e.g., country; Blake et al., 2015) or by age, but have not examined other individual differences, such as parental familism beliefs.

In the present studies we examine whether 3-to 13-year-old children’s resource distribution decisions are associated with their parents’ familism values. Children are introduced to a protagonist that has one cookie to distribute to one of two characters of varying relationships to the protagonist. The 12 trials consist of a cross of four family members (parent, sibling, grandparent, cousin) and three alternatives (friend, stranger, self). Children are asked who the protagonist should give the cookie to. We hypothesize that children’s allocations to family members will be positively associated with parent scores on the familism questionnaire.

A pilot study with a similar design replicates the findings of Olson and Spelke (2008). Children gave cookies to friends (85%) and siblings (66%) over strangers (binomial tests, ps < .006), but did not differentiate between siblings and friends (58% chose siblings; p = .260). For our new trials including parents, children gave cookies to parents (82%) over strangers (p < .0001), but did not differentiate between parents and friends (57% chose parent; p = .254) or siblings (51% chose parent, p = .909).

The goal for recruitment in the ongoing study is to increase representation of Hispanic/Latinx families (who only represented 20% of the pilot sample) to examine additional factors related to racial/ethnic identity. These results might highlight the importance of researching cultural concepts, like familism, in children’s social cognition processes.

Authors

• Samantha Alvarado, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Presenting Author

• Jasmine M. DeJesus, University of North Carolina at Greensboro