Poster #27 - Effort and Disadvantaged Status: Children’s and Young Adults’ Evaluations and Reasoning About Science Inequalities

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

Younger children primarily make appeals to equality and fairness in light of resource inequalities, with concerns for equity and merit becoming more salient by middle childhood (Rizzo et al., 2016; Elenbaas et al., 2016). Less research has investigated how children and adults consider concerns for equity and merit in stereotypic contexts, however, such as those involving inequalities of science supplies between gender groups. The science domain is highly gender-stereotyped (Mulvey et al., 2022), and thus it is possible that children and adults alike may endorse inequalities that favor boys over girls in science contexts, even when girls display high effort in science.
To investigate children and adults’ (N = 144) evaluations of science inequalities, and subsequent reasoning, we presented 5- to 6-year-olds, (n = 49; 24 girls; Mage = 5.83 years, SDage = 0.97 years), 9- to 11-year-olds (n = 47: 24 girls; Mage = 10.74 years, SDage = 0.68 years), and young adults (n = 48; 24 girls; Mage = 19.92 years, SDage = 1.10 years) a series of vignettes depicting science inequalities. One group (boys or girls) had six boxes of science supplies (advantaged) while another group (boys or girls) had one box of science supplies (disadvantaged). The groups displayed high or low effort in science. Participants evaluated the inequality (from 1 = really not okay to 6 = really okay) and provided reasoning (i.e., references to 1) equality, 2) merit, or 3) the status quo).
All age groups evaluated the inequality as being more okay when the high effort group was advantaged compared to disadvantaged (p’s < .05), with one exception. Five- to six-year-old participants did not significantly differ in their evaluations of the inequality when girls were the high effort group and advantaged (M = 3.17, SE = .32) compared to when girls were the high effort group but disadvantaged (M = 3.29, SE = .32), p > .05. Furthermore, 5- to 6-year-olds (M = 3.29, SE = 0.32) evaluated the inequality as being significantly more okay when girls were the high effort group but disadvantaged compared to 9- to 11-year-olds (M = 1.79, SE = 0.32) and young adults (M = 1.50, SE = 0.32), p’s < .01.
All age groups evaluated the inequality as significantly more okay when girls were the advantaged group and displayed high effort compared to low effort in science, p’s < .01. However, 5- to 6-year-olds and young adults did not significantly differ in their evaluations of inequality when boys held advantaged status and exhibited high effort in science compared to low effort in science, p’s > .05.
These findings indicate that 5- to 6-year-olds and young adults privileged advantaged status for boys (regardless of their effort in science), yet attended to concerns for effort when girls hold advantaged status. Our final presentation will include details regarding age-related differences in reasoning for participants’ evaluations of inequality. These results shed light on potential barriers and biases that privilege boys, over girls, in science inequality contexts.

Authors

• Riley N. Sims, University of Maryland - College Park
  Presenting Author

• Amanda Rose Burkholder, Furman University

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