The influence of social status on children's merit‐based resource allocation: The potential explanation of expectation

Abstract

How 3‐ to 11‐year‐old children integrate recipients' merit and social status when allocating resources was examined in 2021 and 2022. Study 1 (Han Chinese, n = 309, 150 girls) showed that while children prioritized merit, they developed from favoring high‐status recipients to favoring low‐status recipients. Study 2 (n = 194, 98 girls) and Study 3 (n = 138, 68 girls) revealed that children held stereotypes about the relation between merit and social status which shifted with age from expecting high‐status peers to expecting low‐status peers to work harder, these expectations corresponded allocation decisions. These findings suggest children shift from perpetuating to rectifying inequity and changing stereotypes about people of different social status may serve an important function in the process.

The role of between‐group competition in children's within‐group merit‐based resource allocation

“…In previous studies, it has been found that children as young as 3 years tended to give a larger share of resources to the more hard-working person as opposed to the less hard-working person in a collaborative context (Baumard et al, 2012;Hamann et al, 2014). In addition, this merit-based allocation tendency remains stable even with the interference of social factors Xiao et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2023). For instance, in group scenarios where resources were allocated between in-group and out-group members who exerted high or low merit, children consistently adhered to allocating more resources to the high-merit person and were influenced minimally, if at all, by group bias .…”