1-108 - Expectations and Attitudes Toward Haves and Have-Nots in Infants and Young Children

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

According to a recent report by Oxfam (2016), the richest 62 individuals on earth are wealthier, as a group, than the poorer half of the world’s population. How do expectations and attitudes toward resource inequalities develop? Our symposium juxtaposes two distinct themes that reflect humans’ complex and contradictory responses to inequalities.
One theme is the early emergence of an equity-based expectation that resource-poor individuals should receive greater allocations than resource-rich individuals. The first presentation used an implicit task and found that 21-month-old infants expected an experimenter to divide toys equally between similarly advantaged individuals, but to give more toys to a disadvantaged than an advantaged individual. The second presentation used an array of explicit measures and found that 5—6-year-olds protested against allocations that favored a rich recipient and were likely to reward a distributor who favored a poor recipient but to punish a distributor who favored a rich recipient.
The other theme is the early emergence of an affiliative preference for the resource-rich. The last two presentations in our symposium explored some of the factors that underlie this preference. The third presentation found evidence of negative attitudes toward the resource-poor: when introduced to a novel group without control over resources, 5-year-olds with essentialist beliefs about the group endorsed more negative attitudes toward it. Finally, the last presentation found evidence of positive attitudes toward the resource-rich: mid-SES American 4—8-year-olds and lower-SES Indian 8—10-year-olds viewed children with more toys as likelier givers than children with fewer toys.

Sub Unit

• Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Chair

• Renée Baillargeon, University of Illinois

Individual Presentations

• Infants Expect Larger Allocations for Disadvantaged Individuals - Presenting Author: Melody Buyukozer Dawkins, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Stephanie Sloane, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Renée Baillargeon, University of Illinois

• Development of a Charity Norm – Preschool Children Protest against Unfair Distribution of Resources - Presenting Author: Monika Wörle, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; Markus Paulus, University of Munich

• Essentialism contributes to negative attitudes towards low status groups - Presenting Author: Marjorie Rhodes, New York University; Sarah-Jane Leslie, Princeton University

• “Wealth makes many friends”: Children expect giving from resource-rich individuals - Presenting Author: Richard Evan Ahl, Yale University; Yarrow Dunham, yarrow.dunham@yale.edu