Children’s Understanding and Use of Four Dimensions of Social Status

Enright, Elizabeth A.; Alonso, Daniel J.; Lee, Bella M.; Olson, Kristina R.

doi:10.1080/15248372.2020.1797745

Cited by 40 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…One mechanism through which essentialism may promote prejudice is by shaping children's attributions for social status disparities they observe. Children are highly attuned to intergroup disparities in social status, such as disparities in social dominance, achievement, wealth, and social power (Nesdale and Flesser, 2001;Olson et al, 2012;Shutts et al, 2016;Enright et al, 2020;Mandalaywala et al, 2020; we return to the multifaceted nature of social status in the Discussion). They robustly hold attitudes favoring high-over low-status groups (Horwitz et al, 2014;Li et al, 2014;Shutts et al, 2016;Ahl and Dunham, 2019), even when these groups are novel (e.g., Blues and Yellows, Bigler et al, 2001).…”

Section: Personal Attributions and Prejudice Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We tested 5-and 6-year-old participants, reasoning that social essentialism and status-based social preferences are both in place by the preschool years (Rhodes and Mandalaywala, 2017;Enright et al, 2020), but that younger children might find the verbal and working memory demands of the tasks challenging. We also aimed to build upon related work on…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, this approach is also limited in its direct applicability to real social status disparities, such as race-and gender-related disparities, which are intimately related social power (Gülgöz and Gelman, 2017) and wealth (Shutts et al, 2016), not just dominance. Although children's conceptions of status are similar across these different dimensions (Enright et al, 2020), future research should explore children's reasoning about these other dimensions of social status as well.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Verbally Highlighting Extrinsic Causes of Novel Social Disparities Helps Children View Low-Status Groups as Structurally Disadvantaged Rather Than Personally Inferior

Peretz‐Lange

Muentener

2021

Front. Psychol.

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As part of their “essentialist” intuitions, young children tend to form personal attributions for observed intergroup differences – attributing them to groups’ intrinsic natures or inborn characteristics. Much research has linked this essentialist view of social groups with prejudiced attitudes. However, less research has explored children’s capacity to form structural attributions for observed intergroup differences – attributing them to groups’ extrinsic circumstances or access to opportunities – or how structural attributions relate to social attitudes. Structural attributions could enable children to view low-status groups as extrinsically disadvantaged rather than intrinsically inferior. We were interested in whether verbally highlighting the extrinsic causes of novel social status disparities could support young children in forming structural attributions for them, thereby mitigating the formation of prejudice toward novel low-status groups. To investigate, we introduced participants (n=106 5- and 6-year olds) to novel social status disparities that could be attributed to either intrinsic or extrinsic causes, and we framed the disparities in either intrinsic, neutral, or extrinsic terms. We then assessed children’s attributions for the disparities (through two measures: explanations and interventions) and their social attitudes toward the groups (through two measures: friendship preferences and prize allocations). Results indicated that participants tended to provide mostly personal attributions overall but that extrinsic framing led them to provide significantly more structural attributions. Extrinsic framing did not significantly impact social attitudes overall, but exploratory analyses revealed that it impacted participants’ friendship preferences in particular. Together, results suggest that verbally highlighting extrinsic causes can disrupt children’s intuitive tendency toward personal attributions, with promising implications for their views of low-status groups.

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Section: Personal Attributions and Prejudice Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Verbally Highlighting Extrinsic Causes of Novel Social Disparities Helps Children View Low-Status Groups as Structurally Disadvantaged Rather Than Personally Inferior

Peretz‐Lange

Muentener

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…Evidence from preschoolers is also mixed. Although a lack of preference for either party has been found in several cases, reports of a preference for the dominant and the subordinate also exist (Charafeddine et al, 2018;Charafeddine et al, 2016, Enright et al, 2020, Castelain et al, 2015. What is clear from this divergence is that preschool-aged children do not seem to have a strong preference between high-vs. low-ranking parties, especially in the case of dominance.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Preschoolers identify prestige from bystander attention, a cue that signals interest from others (Chudek et al, 2012;Enright et al, 2020). Further, children as young as five years expect a subordinate character to like and approach a prestigious individual, but to fear a dominant one (Kajanus et al, 2020).…”

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confidence: 99%

Preschoolers do not generalize dominance roles from one situation to another

Afshordi¹

2021

Preprint

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Recognizing social rank as a third-party observer is an important social skill. With regard to dominance—the coercive form of social rank—infants expect the winner of a zero-sum conflict over one type of resource to win again when competing with the same agent over a different type of resource (Mascaro & Csibra, 2012). However, it is unclear whether preschoolers also expect dominant-subordinate roles to generalize across situations. The current study tested this question with preschoolers (3-5 years, n = 280, 140 female, USA, 80% White) and adults (n = 200, 99 female, USA, 75% White). Preschoolers and adults recognized the dominant puppet in two resource conflict situations (a toy to play with, a bench to sit on) in which one puppet won by force and the other lost (Exp. 1). Preschoolers did not expect the puppet who had been dominant in one situation (e.g. toy) to win again in a new situation (e.g. bench) (Exp. 2a and 2b). Adults, like infants, thought the dominant puppet would win again (Exp. 2b). When the concepts of dominance and fairness were primed (Exp. 3), preschoolers’ inferences about the winner diverged: Children who had been primed with dominance thought the subordinate would win, while those who had been primed with fairness responded at chance level. This finding, together with converging support from children’s justifications, suggests that preschoolers are particularly sensitive to the unfairness of dominance interactions, and indicates that this consideration affects their inferences about the stability of dominance.

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Who is a thinker? With age, higher SES American children increasingly associate social status with divisions in labour

Nancekivell

Farrow

Maurer

2022

Infant and Child Development

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This exploratory report investigates how children, aged 6-to 12-years, reason about divisions in labour. It focuses on understanding when in development children might associate higher status groups with intellectual as opposed to physical labour. It explores this question by introducing a sample of mostly mid/high-SES American children to a novel factory setting and then asking them who is likely to have one of two jobs: a 'builder' (physical labour), or 'thinker' (intellectual labour) job. Older children were more likely than younger children to associate an individual's higher social status with intellectual labour work as opposed to physical labour work. Children also explained their reasoning, and with age their explanations focused more on social factors like the role of access to 'choices' or opportunities in shaping the nature of others' work.

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Children’s Understanding and Use of Four Dimensions of Social Status

Cited by 40 publications

References 63 publications

Verbally Highlighting Extrinsic Causes of Novel Social Disparities Helps Children View Low-Status Groups as Structurally Disadvantaged Rather Than Personally Inferior

Verbally Highlighting Extrinsic Causes of Novel Social Disparities Helps Children View Low-Status Groups as Structurally Disadvantaged Rather Than Personally Inferior

Preschoolers do not generalize dominance roles from one situation to another

Who is a thinker? With age, higher SES American children increasingly associate social status with divisions in labour

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