Chilean children's essentialist reasoning about poverty

Abstract

Two studies are reported that examine the hypothesis that children construct representations of poverty based on a theory of causal essentialism. One hundred and twenty Chilean kindergartners, half from low socio-economic status (SES) schools and the other half from high-SES schools, participated in the study. The results showed children's tendency towards an essentialist reasoning about poverty. All children in the study privileged internal features over external ones when deciding who is poor, and also used wealth category as a preferred clue to make inferences about people's attributes. However, only high-SES children's answers were consistent with the belief that poverty is inherited and resistant to growth. Implications of these findings for theory and practice, as well as remaining questions, are addressed.

Social class differences produce social group preferences

“…While previous studies show that children see wealth as socially meaningful (e.g. children think that people with the same amount of wealth have other things in common as well; del Rio & Strasser, 2011;Diesendruck & haLevi, 2006), SES information and house color information differ in other ways as well. To help illuminate why certain group attributes influence children's attitudes while others do not, future research could directly manipulate the social relevance of a novel group attribute (e.g.…”

“…The presence of a group preference effect in Experiment 1, but not Experiment 2, raises questions about why wealth information could have such a strong impact on children's preferences. For example, wealth information may be particularly meaningful to children because they view it as a signal of competence (and competence is an important trait; Sigelman, 2012), or it may be that wealth differences are meaningful because they imply 'essential' differences (del Rio & Strasser, 2011). We return to this idea in the General Discussion.…”

“…Why did wealth information influence children's attitudes in Experiment 1? One possibility is that wealth could have a specific and powerful effect on children's evaluations of individuals and entire social groups because it is seen as an essential social category and supports rich social inferences (Brey & Shutts, 2013;del Rio & Strasser, 2011;Diesendruck & haLevi, 2006;Sigelman, 2012). Alternatively, wealth may not be particularly unique; instead, any attribute that varies in positivity and is linked to social groups may lead children to favor one group over another.…”

“…Preschool-age children can classify people as 'rich' versus 'poor' based on clothing differences (Ramsey, 1991), and 5-year-old children assume that people with comparable amounts of wealth have other properties in common (e.g. liking to play the same game, liking the same people; del Rio & Strasser, 2011;Diesendruck & haLevi, 2006). Young children associate greater wealth with greater competence (Brey & Shutts, 2013;Sigelman, 2012), and think that other people like children from wealthier families more than they like children from poorer families (Mookherjee & Hogan, 1981).…”

How language shapes the cultural inheritance of categories

“…Internal bodily organs are thought to have the power to modify the recipient's behavior (93,94). That essentialist beliefs have been documented in young children and across a variety of cultural contexts suggests that essentialism is a fundamental component of human cognition (23,(95)(96)(97)(98)(99). Although which categories are essentialized varies crossculturally, especially for categories of people (such as race, gender, or ethnicity) (100), essentialism of both natural kinds and social kinds has been broadly and consistently documented (101)(102)(103).…”