Children’s Beliefs About the Role of Economic (Dis)advantage in Education and Work

• In Event: Social Class in Education: Children’s Beliefs About who is Smart, Hardworking, and Praiseworthy

Abstract

Social class inequalities in education and work exist throughout the world. Yet, little is known about if and when children develop expectations about the consequences of economic (dis)advantage in these domains. In the current research, we asked: How do children understand patterns of social class in education and work? Study 1 included 7- to 12-year-old US American children (47 girls; N = 97). Children were presented with 12 vignettes that depicted line-drawings of two school-aged characters and their respective homes. One character was described as economically advantaged (“This kid’s family has a lot of money. See? He and his family live in a house like this”) and one was described as economically disadvantaged (“This kid’s family only has a little money. See? He and his family live in a house like this”). Children were then asked to select which character would obtain a particular outcome. Each trial featured a new pair of (gender-matched) characters and a new outcome. Half the outcomes were positive (e.g., “will go to college”) and half were negative (“will repeat a grade in elementary school”). Finally, outcomes concerned four categories: ability (e.g., “is really smart”), effort (e.g., “always finishes all of their homework”), proximal outcomes (“gets really good grades on tests”), and distal outcomes (“will go to college”). For trials concerning effort, children viewed disadvantaged targets as more hardworking than advantaged targets (b = −1.87, p < .001). In spite of this, however, for distal outcomes, children believed advantaged targets would have positive outcomes in the future (b = 0.78, p < .001). For both ability and proximal outcome trials, children’s responses did not differ from chance (ps > .44) (see Figure 1). In contrast to children, for both effort and ability trials, adults’ responses (Study 2; N = 119) were not different from chance (ps > .09). For both proximal and distal outcomes, however, adults thought that disadvantaged targets would have negative outcomes in the future and advantaged targets would have positive outcomes in the future (bs = 2.35 and 3.05 respectively, ps = .014 and <.001 respectively) (see Figure 2). Further, the more strongly participants endorsed protestant work ethic, the closer they were to chance responding for each of the four outcome types (ps < .031). This suggests that people who strongly attribute success to hard work are less likely to acknowledge the role of economic (dis)advantage in education and work. The present work sheds light on children’s and adults’ beliefs about social class inequalities in education and work. Despite viewing advantaged targets as less hardworking than disadvantaged targets, children believed advantaged targets would obtain positive future outcomes such as going to college and getting a good job. Adults also believed advantaged targets would obtain positive outcomes, both in the future and in more immediate school contexts. However, adults did not view the advantaged as more or less hardworking or intelligent than the disadvantaged. Together, these findings illustrate nuance and developmental change in how people conceptualize the consequences of economic (dis)advantage.

Authors

• Melis Muradoglu, Stanford University
  Presenting Author

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University