Class Consciousness among Young Rural Children

Age Differences in Perceptions of Rich and Poor People: Is It Skill or Luck?

“…Overall, then, children as young as the age of six evaluate rich people more favorably than poor people and find them more likeable before they display equity thinking about income inequality. This early evaluative reaction is consistent with some earlier findings (Mookherjee & Hogan, ; Shutts & Olson, ; Tudor, ), as well as with research on affective tagging of people who experience good or bad fortune (Olson et al., , ). Moreover, young children impute to rich or poor people traits similar to those they impute to the winners or losers of both contests of skill and contests of chance.…”

Rich man, poor man: Developmental differences in attributions and perceptions

“…Young children, like older children, rated the rich man as more competent than the poor man, consistent with other evidence that rich people (Mookherjee & Hogan, 1981), and even recipients of good fortune and winners of games of chance (Olson et al, 2008;Weisz et al, 1982), are likely to be seen by young children as having desirable personal traits. However, perceptions of the rich man were not globally or uniformly more positive than perceptions of the poor man.…”

“…However, perceptions of the rich man were not globally or uniformly more positive than perceptions of the poor man. Indeed, contrary to the findings of other studies (Baldus & Tribe, 1978;Mookherjee & Hogan, 1981;Shutts & Olson, 2011;Tudor, 1971), children did not find the rich man to be more socially attractive or likeable than the poor man. Indeed, first graders, the age group most expected to form globally positive impressions of rich people relative to poor people, rated the poor man as more socially appealing than the rich man, not unlike the adolescents in Skafte's (1989) study who saw poor people as trying hard and being generous.…”

“…For example, Mookherjee and Hogan (1981) found that kindergarten children evaluated drawings of rich peers more positively than drawings of poor peers even though understanding of cognitive and behavioral distinctions among the three social class levels portrayed was not evident until 7 or 8 years of age (see also Tudor, 1971, for similar findings for first graders). More recently, Shutts and Olson (2011) reported that even younger children, 3-to 5-year-olds, say they like wealthy stimulus people better than poor ones, like Whites better than Blacks (even if they are African American themselves), and associate being White with being wealthy (see also Newheiser & Olson, 2012).…”

“…However, we expected 6-year-olds to show more awareness of the relevance of ability and effort in response to structured questions than in response to open-ended questions. Based on some previous findings (e.g., Mookherjee & Hogan, 1981), as well as on the concept of affective tagging (Olson et al, 2006;Olson et al, 2008), we expected perceptions of a rich person to be more positive than perceptions of a poor person at all ages, even among 6-year-olds. However, we expected 6-year-olds to have globally positive trait perceptions and older children and adolescents to have more differentiated perceptions emphasizing differences between rich and poor people in competence-related traits believed to contribute to economic success, but not necessarily in social and physical attractiveness.…”