About this paper symposium

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Panel information
Panel 7. Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Paper #1
“I’m not made of money”: Children’s judgements of others’ purchasing power
Author information	Role
Adine Ana Maria Deleon, Boston University, United States	Presenting author
Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University, United States	Non-presenting author
Abstract
As adults, we can automatically encode wealth cues to make judgments about others’ social status (Kraus et al., 2017). Research indicates that children also use wealth cues to make similar judgments and consider purchasing power when assessing social status (Legaspi et al., 2023; Shutts et al., 2016). However, this raises the question of how children conceptualize purchasing power (or one’s ability to buy an item). Do children simply think those with expensive things are made of money and are able to purchase resources easily? The current study examines children’s judgments of purchasing power after being exposed to a wealth cue (i.e., house appearance). We also explored whether children’s mindset (fixed or growth) is related to their judgements of wealth. We anticipated that children would judge purchasing power more difficult when exposed to a house with low wealth cues. Fifty-seven children participated (5-10-year-olds) in local public parks and Boston’s Museum of Science. Children were presented with a 2-part protocol: a mindset portion and a purchasing power portion. In the mindset portion, children were initially asked to endorse either a fixed or growth mindset. Then participants were introduced to two characters: a character who was the smartest kid in their class and a character who was the hardest working. The children were then invited to judge how difficult it would be for each character to become the richest person in the future. Finally, children were asked to choose which character they believed would become the richest person in the future. In the purchasing power section children were shown images of real houses in the Boston area and then asked how hard they thought it would be for a family living in the house to save money for in-ground pool, family vacation to Disney World, or an entirely new house. For each item the child gave their justification for their ratings. We conducted a mixed-effects logistic regression to explore whether endorsed mindset, age, and difficulty ratings for both characters predicted the likelihood of selecting the smart or hardworking child as the richest person in the future. The analysis revealed that difficulty ratings for the smart child significantly predicted participants’ forced choice responses (B=0.73, p=0.03, OR=2.10). None of the other main effects were statistically significant (p>.30). We conducted a mixed-effects ordinal logistic regression to investigate whether house cues, mindset, and confidence level predicted children’s judgments of purchasing power. The results showed that house cues significantly predicted children’s purchasing power ratings (B=-0.9, SE=0.22, p<.001), with ratings becoming less difficult when children were exposed to high-priced versus low-priced homes. Children’s mindset beliefs, whether fixed (9%) or growth (91%), along with age and confidence level, did not predict purchasing power (ps > 0.11). These findings have important implications for how children perceive both others and their own potential to change social status. Additionally, children’s justifications for their purchasing power judgments will be discussed during the presentation, offering deeper insight into the mechanisms through which they make these inferences about others.

Paper #2
Children’s Wealth and Social Status Judgments of Occupations Involving Physical vs. Intellectual Labor
Author information	Role
Yuhan Wang, University of Wisconsin Madison, United States	Presenting author
Kristin Shutts, University of Wisconsim Madison, United States	Non-presenting author
Abstract
Occupations play a critical role in social structures, but relatively little research has investigated how young children conceptualize occupations or think about people who hold different occupations (cf. Bigler et al., 2003; Liben et al., 2001). The present study investigated how children apprehend a dimension that sociologists and economists use to characterize different occupational roles – namely whether a job involves primarily physical labor or primarily intellectual labor. To do so, we assessed how children reason about the wealth and social status of individuals in such roles. Sixty-six children (6-11 years) viewed 8 pairs of characters (matched for gender, age, race, and clothing style). One character was described as performing physical labor, and one was described as performing intellectual labor (see example trial in Figure 1). Characters in a pair worked in the same context (e.g., cake-making), but had different job responsibilities. For 4 trials, participants were asked about wealth (“Who lives in this really big fancy house?”); remaining trials focused on social status (“Who is in charge?”). Question order was counterbalanced across participants. We fit a binomial linear mixed effects model to determine whether children’s responses favored any character type for each question type. For wealth questions, children indicated that those who performed intellectual labor would live in fancy houses (B = .56, SE = .21, 95% CI [.15, .97], p = .007). For social status questions, children indicated that those who performed intellectual labor would be in charge (B = 2.75, SE = .72, 95% CI [1.34, 4.16], p < .001). We then performed a binomial linear mixed effects model predicting children’s responses as a function of age, question type, and their interaction. This analysis revealed only two main effects (age: B = .47, SE = .14, 95% CI [.19, .74], p = .001; question type: B = 2.18, SE = .64, 95% CI [.92, 3.44], p = .001). Older children were more likely to choose intellectual laborers on both question types, and children were more likely to choose intellectual laborers on status than on wealth questions. Our findings reveal that from a young age, children use information about the nature of individuals’ work to make inferences about their wealth and social status. Further, children’s inferences in the present study were in line with adults’ reasoning in this domain (Bank, 2018). Future planned studies will employ a similar paradigm to investigate how children reason about other important distinctions that characterize occupations (e.g., routinized vs. variable work) and test mechanisms underlying children’s reasoning. Overall, the present research, together with planned future research, will shed light on how children apprehend different social roles, including ones that they will someday occupy.

Paper #3
The emergence of wealth- and geography-based associations in childhood
Author information	Role
Rachel Ann King, University of Chicago, United States	Presenting author
Katherine D. Kinzler, University of Chicago, United States	Non-presenting author
Abstract
Across the United States, people experience inequality based on how much money they have and where they live (Kraus et al., 2012; Lichter & Brown, 2011). Inequities between wealthy versus impoverished and urban versus rural people – social, cultural, material – intersect to affect children’s lives in domains ranging from social development to academic opportunity (Thiede et al., 2019; Tine, 2017). What qualities do children come to associate with people experiencing wealth (vs. poverty) in urban (vs. rural) areas? Across six studies, we tested this question with 4–11-year-old U.S. children (N=556) from diverse socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds. Study 1 participants (N=77 in upstate New York) indicated which of four target children – one urban impoverished child, one urban wealthy child, one rural impoverished child, and one rural wealthy child – could be described by a series of qualities drawn from adult stereotyping literature (e.g., Durante & Fiske, 2017) and real-world inequities experienced by people from different wealth and geographic backgrounds (e.g., Kraus et al., 2012): worldly knowledge vs. local knowledge, delegation vs. doing-it-yourself, leading vs. following, reliance on experts vs. reliance on family, and intelligence vs. niceness vs. hard work. See Figure 1. As hypothesized, children associated dimensions such as worldly (vs. local) knowledge, delegating (vs. doing-it-yourself), and intelligence (vs. hard work) with wealthy (vs. impoverished) targets. Relative to participants’ wealth-based responding, there were few effects of target geography. See Figure 2. Participants in Study 2 (N=144 from low- to middle-income households in rural upstate New York) Study 3 (N=81 from low-income households in rural Arkansas), and Study 4 (N=144 from middle- to high-income households in Chicago, Illinois) completed the same task as Study 1 to probe replicability across qualitatively different samples. Overall, the Study 1 results replicated in Studies 2–4, suggesting that children raised in dissimilar geo-economic contexts nevertheless develop similar concepts of wealth- and geography-based inequality early in life. Participants in Studies 1–4 did not differentiate between urban and rural targets. These null effects could suggest (1) that participants did not have a robust conceptualization of geography as a socially relevant property; or (2) that wealth overshadowed geography when both dimensions were presented simultaneously. Studies 5 (N=72 from low- to middle-income households in upstate New York) and 6 (N=72 from middle- to high-income households in Chicago) address these competing interpretations by asking children the same questions as Studies 1–4, but about urban and rural targets presented without wealth information. Here, participants differentiated between urban and rural targets. For example, participants selected rural (vs. urban) targets as harder-working (vs. smarter). We also asked children who was likely to be rich or poor; children overwhelmingly selected an urban (vs. rural) target as rich (vs. poor), providing evidence of overlap in children’s wealth and geography concepts. Overall, results suggest that U.S. children from diverse backgrounds develop similar concepts of wealth- and geography-based inequality early in life. Further, children’s wealth and geography concepts overlap (although wealth may be more salient), highlighting the importance of intersectional approaches in studying children’s concepts of inequality.

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