Wealth differences between individuals are ubiquitous in modern society, and often serve as the basis for biased social evaluations among adults. The present research probed whether children use cues that are commonly associated with wealth differences in society to guide their consideration of others. In Study 1, 4–5-year-old participants from diverse racial backgrounds expressed preferences for children who were paired with high-wealth cues; White children in Study 1 also matched high-wealth stimuli with White faces. Study 2 conceptually replicated the preference effect from Study 1, and showed that young children (4–6 years) also use material wealth indicators to guide their inferences about people’s relative standing in other domains (i.e., competence and popularity). Study 3 revealed that children (5–9 years) use a broad range of wealth cues to guide their evaluations of, and actions toward, unfamiliar people. Further, biased responses were not attenuated among children whose families were lower in socioeconomic status. Often overlooked by those who study children’s attitudes and stereotypes, social class markers appear to influence evaluations, inferences, and behavior early in development.
Four studies (N=192) tested whether young children use nonverbal information to make inferences about differences in social power. Five- and 6-year-old children were able to determine which of two adults was “in charge” in dynamic videotaped conversations (Study 1) and in static photographs (Study 4) using only nonverbal cues. Younger children (3–4 years) were not successful in Study 1 or Study 4. Removing irrelevant linguistic information from conversations did not improve the performance of 3–4-year-old children (Study 3), but including relevant linguistic cues did (Study 2). Thus, at least by 5 years of age, children show sensitivity to some of the same nonverbal cues adults use to determine other people’s social roles.
When navigating unfamiliar social environments, it is important to identify who is powerful. Determining who has power can be challenging because observers may have limited social information, and because people achieve influence for many reasons. In experiments with 3-to 5-year-old children (n = 192) and adults (n = 32), we investigated the developmental origins and conceptual structure of power judgments based on physical appearance. At 3 years of age, children already associated physical strength with expansive posture; soon after, expansive postures also supported judgments of normative authority and were joined by similar judgments about masculine facial structure. By the age of 4, children also matched high-and low-power versions of faces and postures together, indicating that they draw connections between different aspects of more or less powerful appearance. The complexity and timing of these changes highlights limitations in current accounts of the origins of adults' intuitions about powerful appearances. This study documents several novel developmental patterns that generate new hypotheses about the mechanisms that support the emergence of children's intuitions.
What factors contribute to children’s tendency to view individuals as having different traits and abilities? The present research tested whether young children are influenced by adults’ nonverbal behaviors when making inferences about peers. In Study 1, participants (5–6 years) viewed multiple videos of interactions between a ‘teacher’ and two ‘students;’ all individuals were unfamiliar to participants. In each clip, the students behaved similarly, but the teacher did not: She either smiled, nodded, touched, or shook her head at one student, and looked at the other student with a neutral expression. In Study 1, children tended to infer that students were smarter, nicer, and stronger if the teacher behaved more positively toward them. Study 2 pitted differences in the teacher’s behavior against differences in the students’ performance. When asked who was smarter, children selected lower-performing students who received more positive nonverbal cues from the teacher rather than higher-performing students who received less positive cues. The findings indicate that an authority figure’s nonverbal behaviors can influence children’s inferences about others, shedding light on one mechanism guiding young children’s evaluations of people in their social world.
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