The development of social group concepts and stereotypes about wealth and urban-rural geography

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

Abstract

Across the United States, people experience inequality based on the amount of money they have and where they live (Kraus et al., 2012; Lichter & Brown, 2011). Inequities between wealthy versus impoverished and urban versus rural people – social, cultural, material – intersect to affect children’s lives in domains ranging from social development to academic opportunity (Thiede et al., 2019; Tine, 2017). Stereotypes further perpetuate these existing disparities (e.g., Spencer & Castano, 2007). Yet, the scope of children’s reasoning about wealth and geography as intersecting social properties remains unclear. We examined 4–11-year-old children’s (N=518) knowledge of wealth- and geography-based inequality and stereotypes.

Study 1 participants (N=77 in upstate New York) indicated which of four target children could be described by various traits, knowledge, and behaviors; target children consisted of one urban impoverished child, one urban wealthy child, one rural impoverished child, and one rural wealthy child. See Figure 1. There were many effects of target wealth. For instance, participants selected wealthy targets as more likely to be smart, leaders, and world travelers, but selected impoverished targets as more hardworking, self-sufficient, and reliant on family. See Figure 2. Relative to participants’ wealth-based responding, there were few effects of target geography.

Participants in Study 2 (N=144 in upstate New York), Study 3, (N=81 in Arkansas), and Study 4 (N=144 in Chicago, Illinois) completed the same task as Study 1 to probe replicability among qualitatively different samples. Participants in Study 2 were lower-income than participants in Study 1 but lived in the same geographic area. Participants in Study 3 were low-income and lived in a relatively rural area compared to participants in Study 4, who were higher-income and lived in a large city. The results largely replicated Study 1 among children from these diverse backgrounds. For instance, impoverished targets were selected as hardworking, whereas wealthy targets were selected as smart. Again, there were few effects of target geography.

Following Studies 1–4, it was unclear whether participants did not have a robust conceptualization of geography as a socially relevant property, or whether instead geography was overshadowed by wealth. Study 5 asked children about geography stereotypes in isolation, without providing wealth information. Study 5 participants (N=72) answered the same questions as in Studies 1–4 about urban and rural targets. Here, participants selected rural targets as hardworking and selected urban targets as smart and leaders. We also added a new question about who was likely to be rich or poor. Participants overwhelmingly selected an urban target as rich and a rural target as poor, providing evidence of overlap in children’s concepts of wealth and geography.

Overall, the results suggest that children from diverse socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds in the United States reason about both wealth and geography as socially relevant properties, but wealth may be more salient. This work also illuminates the overlapping content of children’s wealth and geography concepts, highlighting the importance of intersectional approaches in studying children’s beliefs about wealth and poverty.

Authors

• Rachel Ann King, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Katherine D. Kinzler, University of Chicago