Children’s attitudes towards the wealthy and reasoning about wealth inequalities across four cultures

• In Event: Children's reasoning about wealth and poverty: Causal mechanisms and intersectional approaches

Abstract

Economic inequality is on the rise, reaching high levels across the globe. Critically, children learn to navigate the social world against the backdrop of these striking inequalities. How do children from different cultures conceptualize wealthy and poor people and the disparities between them?

Study 1 documented the developmental trajectory of children’s understanding of wealth, poverty, and social inequalities across cultures. We introduced 4-10-yr-olds from the US, Turkey, and China (N = 270) to two novel groups that differ in wealth, and we will collect data in India (pre-registered; planned N = 84). These countries differ across a range of socioeconomic and psychological factors (e.g., levels of inequality, individualism-collectivism) that may jointly affect reasonings of wealth and inequality. Results show a large age-related decrease in pro-rich bias across three cultures: Younger children favor rich over poor people and evaluate the rich more positively, while with older children, this bias is reduced. Cultural variations emerge in terms of children’s understanding of social inequalities (i.e., Is inequality fair/unfair?) and social power (e.g., was a rich/poor person chosen as the leader?). American and Turkish children start to perceive inequality as unfair around middle childhood, while Chinese children already show this pattern as young as age 4. While with age, American and Turkish children think that rich people are more likely to hold leadership positions than poor people, Chinese children show the opposite pattern/relationship. Taken together, Study 1 demonstrates a striking developmental shift in pro-rich biases, as well as an increasing conceptual depth in children's reasoning about social inequalities across cultures when children reason about other groups that differ in wealth.

In Study 1, children are third-party observers of wealth inequalities; Yet in the real world, children are members of different socioeconomic groups themselves. Would children’s own positions in the social ladder play a role in coloring their early understandings of social inequalities? To answer this question, Study 2 tests American children aged 5-9 (N = 180) by randomly assigning them to a rich group, a poor group, or a control condition (no group assignment) and asking them about 1) their attitudes; 2) how they wanted to allocate new resources between the two groups; and 3) their justifications for the inequality (e.g., whether they think inequality is due to internal or external factors, fairness judgments, or social mobility beliefs). Results show that merely assigning children to a rich vs. poor novel group in a short experiment is sufficient to motivate children to favor the rich and even justify existing wealth disparities more powerfully. The patterns are especially pronounced in younger children (5-6-yr-olds) compared to older children (8-9-yr-olds). These findings suggest that the human tendency to justify and perpetuate inequalities that advantage their own social groups is potentially early emerging and is engaged when groups differ primarily in wealth.

Together, these studies experimentally investigate how children navigate an unequal social world and provide new insight into the development of more complex reasonings of wealth, poverty, and social inequalities across ages and cultures.

Authors

• Xin Yang, Yale University
  Presenting Author

• Ilayda Orhan

• Yarrow C Dunham, Yale University