Poster #127 - Children and Adolescents’ Biases about High and Low Wealth Peers

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Children have biases about many social groups, often holding positive beliefs about higher status groups and negative beliefs about lower status groups. This pattern is well documented with social group categories such as race and gender (Augoustinos & Rosewarne, 2001; Rowley et al., 2007). Recently, research has demonstrated that a pattern of bias exists based on the wealth status of others as well. For example, children associate high wealth students with competence at academic skills and more so than for low wealth peers (Goodman et al., 2000; Mistry et al, 2015; Woods et al., 2005). However, recent evidence from children’s reasoning about resource allocation and social exclusion has revealed that children also hold negative biases about high wealth peers. For example, children’s reasoning in resource allocation contexts has shown that they view high wealth characters to be less willing to distribute resources fairly, citing stereotypes about greediness (Elenbaas & Killen, 2018). Moreover, in peer group contexts, children associate high wealth groups with being exclusive, referencing perceptions that high wealth children are snobby and unkind (Burkholder et al., 2017). These stereotypes pertain to expectations about social behavior and cognition, indicating that wealth related stereotypes may differ for based on the type of competence that they are evaluating (e.g., academic or social).
The recent findings have generated new questions about the types of biases that children form regarding wealth status. To further investigate children’s wealth-status related biases, this study systemically investigated children’s predictions about a range of behaviors, both academic and social. It was hypothesized that children’s judgments would reflect variability in the types of biases about high and low wealth peers.
Participants (N = 129, goal = 216) were an ethnically and economically diverse sample of 9 to 10-year-olds (n = 92, M = 10.00, SD = .52) and 13 to 14-year-olds (n = 37, M = 13.98, SD = .40). Participants read about one high and one low wealth peer (gender-matched), and predicted which child would be more likely to be associated with: 1) Luck (“be randomly chosen to win a class prize”); 2) Leadership (“be president of a school club”; “be a classroom leader”); 3) Academics (“get an A on a math test”; “do extra credit homework”); and 3) Prosociality (“help a teacher with classroom cleanup”; “comfort a sad friend “). Participant level variables (age and child SES) will also be examined with the full sample.
As shown in Figure 1, preliminary results indicated that children expect the high wealth peer to be more likely to be lucky, have leadership responsibilities, and receive an “A” on a math test, in contrast to a low wealth peer who would be more likely to act prosocially and complete extra credit. These results show that children hold positive beliefs about both high and low wealth groups pertaining to different types of competences and abilities. Stereotypic expectations, whether positive or negative, have detrimental consequences for social relationships, learning, and development. The findings will be discussed in terms of prejudice, bias, and social development.

Authors

• Amanda R. Burkholder, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author

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

• Melanie Killen, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author