Money Talks, but not Nicely: Adults and Children’s Associations Between Wealth and Conformity

• In Event: Invisible but Powerful: Children’s Social and Moral Reasoning Shapes and Mitigates Intergroup Power Imbalances

Abstract

A common notion is that wealthy people have more latitude to exhibit non-conformity. For example, in the moral domain, financial crimes like wage theft have a staggering toll but are much less prosecuted than workers’ petty crimes (Cooper & Kroeger, 2017; Marzán, 2020). Likewise, extremely wealthy children are given more choice in conventional contexts than working-class children (e.g., Anyon, 1980). This latitude predicts that wealthier individuals may feel licensed to more often violate moral and conventional norms, and may also be expected by others to conform less. However, children’s expectations about the relationship between wealth and conformity may differ from those of adults, since young children have stronger pro-conformity (Wen et al., 2019) and pro-wealth biases (Yang & Dunham, 2022). To explore these predictions, we assessed children’s and adults’ intuitions about wealth and conformity across three studies. Each study introduced an extremely poor boy, a middle-class boy, and an extremely wealthy boy. On each trial, participants heard that one of two boys had violated either a conventional norm (e.g., wearing the wrong color pants) or a moral norm (e.g., hitting) and were asked to indicate which boy they believed it had been.

In Study 1, adults (n=240) judged that the wealthier character was more likely to have violated both moral, x2(1)=287.00, p<.001, and conventional norms, x2(1)=25.40, p<.001, although this judgment was more pronounced for moral violations, x2(1)=66.80, p<.001. This was especially true when the wealthier character was very rich, as participants were more likely to select the wealthier character when the rich character was contrasted with the poor or middle-class characters than when the poor and middle-class characters were contrasted, both ps<.001.

In Study 2, we tested 42 younger (4-5 years) and 42 older (6-7 years) children. Older children, like adults, judged that the wealthier character was more likely to violate moral norms, x2(1)=24.90, p<.001. However, unlike adults, they tended to predict that the less wealthy child had violated the conventional norm, x2(1)=5.69, p=.02. Younger children were overall more likely to predict that the poorer character had violated the norm, x2(1)=6.64, p=.01, and these judgements did not differ as a function of norm type, p=.53, or contrast type, all ps>.16.

Study 3 is exploring whether adults and older children specifically expect misbehavior from wealthier individuals, or broadly expect them to be non-conforming, by investigating positive norm violations (e.g., supererogatory helping). Data collection from 84 children and 300 adults is ongoing and will be complete prior to the conference.

These findings suggest that views about the behavior of wealthy and poor individuals change dramatically across the lifespan. Young children predicted that poor characters were more likely to violate all types of norms than wealthy characters. By age 6, children viewed wealthy characters as more likely to violate moral norms, but poor characters as more likely to violate conventional norms. Finally, by adulthood, people viewed wealthy characters as more likely to violate both conventional and moral norms, although this was still stronger for moral norms.

Authors

• Mia Radovanovic, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Arla Dakli, University of Toronto

• Christina Starmans, University of Toronto