The Origins of Intergroup Resource Inequality Influence Children's Decision to Perpetuate or Rectify Inequality.

Jing An,Liqi Zhu,Jing Yu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.571570

Abstract

Previous studies have explored children’s intergroup resource allocation in the context of preexisting intergroup resource inequality. However, resource inequality between social groups often originates from different factors. This study explored the role of the origins of resource inequality on children’s intergroup resource allocations. In experiment 1, when there was no explicit origin of the intergroup inequality, children of different ages mainly allocated resources in an equal way and 5- to 6-year-olds showed ingroup bias. In experiment 2, we examined the influence of different origins of intergroup inequality and found that 5- to 6-year-olds perpetuated intergroup inequality when resource inequality was based on either a structural (regional disparity) or an internal factor (difference in performance). However, 10- to 11-year-olds rectified inequality or allocated equally when intergroup inequality was based on regional disparity and perpetuated resource inequality when intergroup inequality was based on performance difference. The origins of inequality appear to play an important role in children’s intergroup resource allocations, and older children can distinguish different origins of intergroup inequality in resource allocation.

Highlights

Inequalities are widespread in modern society, including economic, educational, and medical inequalities based on country, region, gender, race, or social class (Mara, 2014; Ridgeway, 2014; Normile, 2017)
This experiment explored how children distributed school supplies between ingroup and outgroup members when witnessing a preexisting intergroup school supplies inequality. We found that both younger and older children tended to allocate resources in an equal manner when presented with preexisting intergroup resource inequality with no explicit origin
In addition to intergroup resource inequality without an explicit origin, intergroup inequality based on certain origins may have different effects on children’s intergroup resource allocation (Olson et al, 2011; Shaw, 2016; Rizzo et al, 2020), which was examined in experiment 2

Summary

Introduction

Inequalities are widespread in modern society, including economic, educational, and medical inequalities based on country, region, gender, race, or social class (Mara, 2014; Ridgeway, 2014; Normile, 2017). Understanding children’s recognition of inequality is of great significance for understanding the development of fairness considerations in social behavior and identifying ways to promote social equality. Resource inequality is an important form of social inequality (Ridgeway, 2014). In the face of resource inequality, how do children react and allocate resources?. Fairness is the criterion for resource allocation (Rutland and Killen, 2017), and the sense of fairness develops in early childhood. Infants expect resources to be allocated from the age of 10 months (Sloane et al, 2012; Meristo and Surian, 2013). When facing resource inequality between individuals, children aged 4–5 years old allocate more to individuals with fewer resources to reduce inequality (Li et al, 2014; Rizzo and Killen, 2016)

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