Poster #32 - Reasoning About Structural Inequality in Childhood

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

Structural inequalities create and perpetuate discrepant outcomes between social groups. However, both adults and children more often attribute discrepancies between social groups to internal, or essentialized, factors of individuals, rather than to structural causes (Gelman, 2003; Gilbert & Malone, 1995). Attributing inequalities between social groups to internalist factors has been linked to increased prejudice toward disadvantaged group members in children (Rhodes & Mandalaywala, 2017). However, previous research by Vasilyeva et al. (2018) found promising evidence that children can overcome this internalist default and employ structural thinking instead of internalist accounts when reasoning about structural inequalities.

The current study investigated children’s (3- to 8-years-old; N = 390) ability to attribute observed inequalities between gender groups to structural over internalist factors. Building upon the paradigm developed by Vasilyeva et al. (2018), children were presented with a novel game in which two classrooms, a boys’ and girls’ classroom respectively, had either an equal or unequal chance of winning a desired prize. Structural inequality was represented by the game being easier in one classroom, thus making one gender group advantaged in their ability to win prizes. Conversely, the absence of structural inequality was represented by the game being equally easy, with equal opportunity to win desired prizes, in each classroom.

Whereas children of all ages demonstrated the ability to recognize structural inequality by successfully selecting the advantageous classroom, t(208) = 15.95, p = <.001, only older children incorporated that understanding into their endorsement of structural explanations. When presented with structural inequality, only 7-to-8-year-old children endorsed structural explanations more than internalist explanations, t(62) = -4.94, p = <.001, and more so than children presented with a fair game, t(108) = -0.88, p = .03. However, while younger children did not increase their support for structural explanations when faced with inequality, children as young as 5-years-old decreased their endorsement of internalist explanations when compared to children who viewed a fair game, t(117) = 2.36, p = .02.

Children’s recognition of structural inequality and endorsement of attributions did not vary if the child’s own gender was depicted as disadvantaged. However, participant gender became relevant to the measure of structural inequality recognition, as for some children (n=181), selecting the advantageous classroom was confounded by gender ingroup bias, such that participants were forced to choose between the advantageous classroom and a classroom of their own gender. When faced with this tension, only 7-to-8-year-old girls were able to set aside ingroup gender bias to reliably select the advantageous room, t(17) = 2.75, p = 0.01. This data will be discussed in light of a second study which seeks to both disentangle structural inequality recognition from ingroup bias, as well as examine the efficacy of interventions to increase preschooler’s ability to reason about structural inequality.

Authors

• Cameron Hall, University of British Columbia (UBC)
  Presenting Author

• Jessica Lee, University of British Columbia (UBC)

• Valerie Teng

• Andrew Scott Baron, University of British Columbia (UBC)