Invisible but Powerful: Children’s Social and Moral Reasoning Shapes and Mitigates Intergroup Power Imbalances

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Power imbalances between societal groups are largely maintained through visible enforcement and material inequalities. However, these imbalances are also reinforced through less visible, unspoken expectations and narratives which create complacency with the status quo. These expectations include sociological rules for how individuals ought to interact with the world and each other (e.g., agency differences, group boundaries), as well as ways of thinking that justify inequalities. Importantly, children learn about societal groups and norms over time, so these intuitions likely shift dramatically with development. To this end, this symposium presents four papers elucidating how children’s and adults’ sociomoral reasoning shapes and mitigates intergroup imbalances across diverse real and minimal group contexts.

Paper 1 investigates how children and adults explain economic inequalities, and under which conditions they justify these inequalities. Paper 2 continues this theme of social maintenance by evaluating how race, intimacy, and parental preferences influence children’s expectations for peer inclusion. Paper 3 explores reasoning about wealth and conformity, establishing that wealthier individuals are viewed as more able to violate moral and conventional norms. Finally, Paper 4 builds on this exploration of conformity by illustrating that motivations for nonconformity influence approval, with those seeking to increase intergroup inclusion viewed most favorably. In this way, this symposium presents a well-rounded developmental view of existing inequalities through lenses of wealth, race, and minimal groups, demonstrating expectations and justifications for differences between groups. However, this symposium also offers an understanding of factors which may be associated with positivity toward shifting intergroup power imbalances.

Sub Unit

• Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Chair

• Mia Radovanovic, University of Toronto

Individual Presentations

• The Role of Intimacy in Interracial Peer Inclusion and Exclusion in Childhood - Presenting Author: Katherine Verity Luken Raz, University of Maryland - College Park; Melanie A. Killen, University of Maryland - College Park

• When Do Children Think Inequality Is Fair? - Presenting Author: Pinar Aldan, Yale University; Yarrow C Dunham, Yale University

• Money Talks, but not Nicely: Adults and Children’s Associations Between Wealth and Conformity - Presenting Author: Mia Radovanovic, University of Toronto; Arla Dakli, University of Toronto; Christina Starmans, University of Toronto

• Condemned or Valued: Children Evaluate Nonconformity Based on Perceived Intergroup Attitudes - Presenting Author: Fan Yang, University of Chicago; Steven Othello Roberts, Stanford University