Material and relational asymmetry: The role of receivers’ wealth and power status in children’s resource allocation

Zhang, Xuran; Corbit, John D.; Xiao, Xue; Xu, Liangyuan; Wei, Bingying; Li, Yanfang

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105147

Cited by 14 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…The above findings from Study 1 may support the view that with increasing age, children shift from allocating resources in a way that maintain the status quo, toward equity-based allocations that compensate individuals who may experience disadvantages due to their social status. This finding is consistent with previous work which has found equitybased allocations increase with age in contexts where social status was the only cue (Charafeddine et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2021).…”

Section: Dominance Status Conditionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…In the dominance domain, children were more likely to reference warmth compared to competence with age. This pattern of findings, along with previous work may be explained by the fact that social dominance can be predicated on socio-emotional asymmetries within relationships (Arsenio & Kramer, 1992;Ongley & Malti, 2014), individuals who are dominant are usually perceived as imperious and hardhearted (Dodge et al, 1990;Hawley, 1999), but wealth status is determined by material asymmetries (Zhang et al, 2021). More specifically, we found that in the domain of wealth, older children (6-11 years of age) tended to believe that low-status individuals exerted more effort than highstatus individuals, offering justifications such as "poor people are hardworking" or "rich children are too lazy to work."…”

Section: Dominance Status Conditionsupporting

confidence: 57%

“…Specifically, young children (3–4 years of age) in a Western context allocate more resources to a dominant individual, whereas older children (7–8 years of age) tend to give more resources to a subordinate character (Charafeddine et al, 2016). A recent study conducted in China compared the influence of both wealth and dominance on children's resources allocation decisions and found that across both types of social status, young children favored high‐status recipients and older children favored low‐status recipients (Zhang et al, 2021). Thus, children can integrate multiple types of social status when making resources allocation decisions and tend to shift from favoring high‐status recipients in early childhood, to rectifying social inequality by favoring low‐status recipients in middle childhood.…”

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2023

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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.

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Section: Dominance Status Conditionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Dominance Status Conditionsupporting

confidence: 57%

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2023

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“…Given inequities of different sizes, at what point do participants move from simply equating the end states to collecting proportionally based on them? This relates to how children integrate judgments of resource collection with their understanding of wealth and the status quo (e.g., Elenbaas, 2019; Elenbaas et al., 2016; Paulus, 2016; Zhang et al., 2021) as well as the extent to which children can make judgments about proportional distributions (McCrink et al., 2010). Moreover, the work on taxation is part of a larger body of literature suggesting a prolonged developmental trajectory for various informal economic concepts (e.g., Leiser & Halachmi, 2006; Smith‐Flores et al., 2021; Thompson & Siegler, 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rectifying inequities in resource collection in young children

Sobel

Blankenship

Yockel

et al. 2022

Developmental Science

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Numerous studies have documented children's understanding of fairness through their ability to rectify inequities when distributing resources to others. Understanding fairness, however, involves more than just applying norms of equity when distributing resources. Children must also navigate situations in which resources are collected from them for a common good. The developmental origins and the trajectory of equitable resource collection are understudied in the literature on children's prosocial behavior.Experiment 1 presented 4-to 8-year-olds (N = 130) with characters who started with different amounts of resources that were available for both personal use and a group project in school. Participants were asked how a teacher should fairly collect resources from the two characters, contrasting the teacher taking the same amount of resources from each individual (preserving the inequity) or leaving each individual with the same amount of resources (rectifying the inequity). Four-and 5-year-olds responded randomly; 6-to 8-year-olds preferred to rectify the inequity. Experiment 2 reproduced this finding on a new group of 5-to 7-year-olds (N = 69), eliciting justifications for their choice. Justifications in terms of fairness related to equitable choices. Experiment 3 reproduced this finding again in a new group of 5-to 7-year-olds (N = 77), contrasting children's preference for equitable resource collection with that of resource distribution. Children were more likely to rectify an inequity when collecting resources than when distributing resources to individuals who started with an inequity. This difference was driven more by the younger children in the sample. We discuss potential mechanisms for these findings in terms of children's developing concepts of fairness. K E Y W O R D Schildren's prosocial behavior, rectifying inequities, resource collection Research Highlights• Across three experiments, children developed preferences for equitable collection of resources by age 6.• Preferences for equitable resource collection were more likely to be justified by appealing to concepts of fairness.• Although preferences for equitable resource collection emerged slightly before equitable resource distribution, these data suggest children develop a unified mechanism for prosocial resource allocation.

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“…They view poverty as unfair and recognize that the poor lack basic necessities as well as a social network ( Chafel and Neitzel, 2005 ). Children increasingly attempt to reduce inequality by allocating more resources and opportunities to low-wealth peers than high-wealth peers with age ( Li et al, 2014 ; Elenbaas and Killen, 2019 ; Zhang et al, 2021 ). In contrast to 4-year-olds, 8-year-olds reported more negative emotions after hypothetically excluding an economically disadvantaged peer ( Dys et al, 2019 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Group Norms Influence Children’s Expectations About Status Based on Wealth and Popularity

2022

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Children’s understanding of status and group norms influence their expectations about social encounters. However, status is multidimensional and children may perceive status stratification (i.e., high- and low-status) differently across multiple status dimensions (i.e., wealth and popularity). The current study investigated the effect of status level and norms on children’s expectations about intergroup affiliation in wealth and popularity contexts. Participants (N = 165; age range: 5–10 years; Mage = 7.72 years) were randomly assigned to hear two scenarios where a high- or low-status target affiliated with opposite-status groups based on either wealth or popularity. In one scenario, the group expressed an inclusive norm. In the other scenario, the group expressed an exclusive norm. For each scenario, children made predictions about children’s expectations for a target to acquire social resources. Novel findings indicated that children associated wealth status to some extent, but they drew stronger inferences from the wealth dimension than from the popularity dimension. In contrast to previous evidence that children distinguish between high- and low-status groups, we did not find evidence to support this in the context of the current study. In addition, norms of exclusion diminished children’s expectations for acquiring social resources from wealth and popularity groups but this effect was more pronounced between wealth groups. We found age differences in children’s expectations in regards to norms, but not in regards to status. The implications of how these effects, in addition to lack of effects, bear on children’s expectations about acquiring resources are discussed.

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Material and relational asymmetry: The role of receivers’ wealth and power status in children’s resource allocation

Cited by 14 publications

References 60 publications

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

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

Rectifying inequities in resource collection in young children

Group Norms Influence Children’s Expectations About Status Based on Wealth and Popularity

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