Inter-Wealth Contact and Young Children’s Concern for Equity

• In Event: 3-137 - Children's View of Social Inequality: Evaluations and Decisions About Wealth

Integrative Statement

In their early experiences with peers, children learn to negotiate situations involving limited resources like toys as they refine their concerns for fairness and strategies like turn taking. Contact with peers also supports the development of attitudes about different social groups. In fact, young children often share more with members of the social groups that they prefer. Interestingly, children from middle- and higher-income families express a preference for wealthy peers, raising the possibility that many children may increase familiar resource inequalities by acting on their social preferences. Intergroup contact, however, may play an important role in children’s decisions. Related work, for instance, has revealed positive impacts of intergroup contact on children’s racial attitudes. To date, few studies have examined intergroup contact in early childhood, and no research has directly addressed young children’s contact with individuals of different wealth backgrounds (inter-wealth contact). Drawing on an intergroup framework, this study examined relations between young children’s contact with individuals of high- and low-wealth backgrounds and their behavior towards peers of these backgrounds in a resource distribution task.
Participants were ethnically diverse 5- to 8-year-old children (N = 72, M = 6.68 years, SD = .98 years) of upper-middle- to higher-income backgrounds. Using a vignette on a laptop, participants were introduced to two hypothetical peers. One was depicted as high-wealth and one was depicted as low-wealth using images of houses, cars, and backpacks. To measure resource allocation behavior and reasoning, participants were asked to distribute five erasers between the two children, and to explain the reason for their decision. Reasoning was coded into conceptual categories reflecting Access to Resources (e.g., “She can buy like a million erasers but she can buy only one pack”) and Wealth Preferences (e.g., “He’s so nice, like his things”). To measure contact, participants were asked if they knew anyone like the high-wealth peer and anyone like the low-wealth peer, and if so, how many (“a few”, “some”, or “a lot”).
Contact with individuals of low-wealth backgrounds (inter-wealth contact) affected children’s behavior indirectly, through social-cognitive reasoning processes (see Figure 1; total indirect effect b = .23 95% CI [.10, .39]). The more inter-wealth contact children reported, the more likely they were to reason about access to resources rather than their own wealth preferences in this context. This reasoning, in turn, was associated with more resources allocated to a low-wealth peer relative to a high-wealth peer. Thus, inter-wealth contact early in development was associated with more equitable peer interactions.
This study was the first to examine the effects of young children’s contact with individuals of different wealth backgrounds on their behavior towards peers of these backgrounds. Economic segregation has been on the rise in the U.S. and many other countries for some time, limiting children’s opportunities for peer interactions across economic lines. However, inter-wealth contact is important to children’s conceptions of distributive justice. Contact with individuals of other economic backgrounds can promote young children’s concern for equity, highlighting the positive impact of these interactions early in development.

Author

• Laura Elenbaas, University of Rochester
  Presenting Author