Adolescents’ Malleable Beliefs About Leadership Helps Them to Recognize Inequality as Unfair

• In Event: Experiences of and Awareness of Social Inequalities and Status Hierarchies in Childhood

Abstract

Children and adolescents recognize teacher biases in allocations of important school resources and view these biases as discriminatory with age (Brown, 2006). Here we examine whether children’s and adolescents’ beliefs about whether status hierarchies are malleable or stable can contribute to (1) the types of reasons they use to explain inequality, and (2) how fair they view inequality perpetuated by a teacher. The present research addressed these questions by examining racial minority participants’ beliefs in two U.S. contexts: Maryland and Hawai‘i.

All participants evaluated hypothetical scenarios in which teachers assigned high-status leadership roles across one of three conditions: 1) unequal: only European American students were selected, 2) unequal: only Latin American/Pacific Islander students were selected, and 3) equal: two students were European American and two were Latin American/Pacific Islander. Participants in Maryland saw versions with Latin American students and participants in Hawai‘i saw versions with Pacific Islander students. We predicted that as children got older, beliefs about whether status hierarchies are malleable or stable would contribute to children recognizing inequality as unfair or fair. We also exploratorily examined whether this relation varied across the two U.S. contexts (Maryland and Hawai‘i) that differed in their history of ethnic diversity.

Participants included 310 8 to 14 year-olds (M = 11.45 years, SD = 1.67 years) living in Maryland (n = 163; 8% Asian, 26% Black, 1% Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, 26% Latinx, 31% Multiracial; 8% Other backgrounds; 48% male, 52% female) and Hawai‘i (n = 147; 28% Asian, 6% Black, 6% Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, 60% Multiracial; 48% male, 52% female. Assessments were: 1) beliefs about whether high-status leadership positions can change or are fixed (e.g., “In school, some people just get all the opportunities to be leaders because of who they are. That doesn’t really change), 2) reasons for why the teacher made equal or unequal leadership assignments, and 3) evaluations of the teacher’s choice. We found that, overall, the more children endorsed leadership positions as fixed, the more they accepted the teacher’s equal and unequal choices as okay (age and condition effects will be presented at the symposium too). There were no differences or interactions based on regional context.

For younger children, the more they endorsed leadership positions as fixed, the more they used internal characteristics to justify the teacher’s equal and unequal choices, such as judging that the teacher made the choice because the child was the smartest. For adolescents, the more they endorsed leadership positions as fixed, the more they thought the teacher wanted to be fair, but only in the case when inequality favored the European American group. Thus, the more adolescents endorsed leadership positions as something that could change, the more they viewed the teacher was unfair when they made unequal choices favoring the typically advantaged group. Among adolescents of color in both Maryland and Hawai’i, believing that leadership positions were fixed appeared to contribute to system justification, whereas believing that leadership positions could change facilitated labeling teacher inequality favoring White students as unfair.

Authors

• Kristin J.M.B. Pauker, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Brey, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

• Amanda Rose Burkholder, Furman University

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