Children’s perceptions of outgroup membership as a motive for harm

• In Event: Moral judgments in intergroup contexts

Abstract

Adults consider harm explicitly motivated by group membership (i.e., hate crimes) to be more serious than harm unrelated to group membership (Rayburn et al., 2003). Concurrently, however, children generally evaluate outgroup harm as more acceptable than ingroup harm (Rhodes & Chalik, 2013; Mulvey, 2016), which raises the question of whether children may actually view “hate crimes” as more acceptable compared to adults.

To test this question, in Study 1, 4- to 9-year-old U.S. children (N = 108) and adults (N = 115) heard about a mild harm (e.g., taking someone’s eraser) involving two members of novel groups (e.g., “Circles” and “Squares”). The harm was attributed either to group membership or to other motivations. In the key condition (“hate crimes”), a protagonist (e.g., a Circle) harmed an outgroup member (e.g., a Square) and stated the victim’s group membership as the motive (“Because you’re a Square!”). Two other closely matched scenarios were compared: (1) harm against an outgroup member based on a personal reason (“Because I don’t like you!”) and (2) a harm against an ingroup member based on a personal reason. We examined participants’ perceptions of these scenarios with a range of measures (e.g., how bad the action was, how punishable it was, how bad the aggressor was as a person). Overall, children and adults showed opposite patterns of responding. Whereas adults rated harm in the “hate crime” condition as most serious (aligning with past work), children showed the opposite pattern (see Figure 1). Study 2 then replicated these results using more closely matched wording between the conditions.

Building on these two studies, we also wondered if the type of group mattered: e.g., social category (e.g., race, gender) versus task-based group (e.g., sports team). In the U.S., crimes motivated by membership in certain protected social categories (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender) are considered hate crimes, while crimes motivated by membership in other types of groups (e.g., sports teams) are not. Using a similar design to Studies 1 and 2, results from Study 3 showed that adults (N = 121) rated harm motivated by membership in a social category (vs. sports team) as more serious, whereas children (N = 120; ages 5-9) did not distinguish between harm done on the basis of social categories versus task-based groups.

Building on the results of Study 3, in Study 4 we asked whether the status difference between the groups affects how children perceive outgroup harm motivated by membership in the outgroup. Another characteristic feature of hate crimes is that the victim belongs to a historically marginalized group. In this study, adults (N = 202) rated harm as worse when it was committed by a high-status group member against a low-status group member (compared to no status difference). For children (N = 180; ages 5-9), this difference was only significant in older (but not younger) children (see Figure 1).

These findings provide important new insights into how children perceive instances of discrimination and bias in their everyday lives.

Authors

• Vivian Liu, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University