Authors:

Sandy Lopez

Date Created:

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About Paper:

Social inequalities are ubiquitous in children's everyday lives. They not only experience these inequalities themselves, they also observe and reason about the inequalities experienced by others. Past research shows that children can recognize the structural barriers that lead to these inequalities [1]. Recently, institutions have begun to implement policies that provide systemic support for historically marginalized groups [2]. These strategies increased these groups' representations [3], but may have some unintended negative consequences. The present study seeks to understand how children reason about the success of historically marginalized groups following policy interventions. Five-to-ten-year-old children (N = 108) heard about a hypothetical competition in a far away town. Historically, one group (boys or girls; counterbalanced) was underrepresented in the competition. In the No Change condition, children will learn that this group remains underrepresented in recent years. In the Change with Rule condition, they will learn that this group's representation increased due to a rule. In the Change without Rule condition, they will learn that this group's representation increased, without hearing any other information. Children were tasked with inferring the ability of the historically underrepresented group and the fairness of the competition. We predicted children would infer that the historically underrepresented group's ability is lowest in the No Change condition, higher in the Change with Rule condition, and highest in the Change without Rule condition. We found that 7-to-8-year-olds did not distinguish between the Change with Rule and Change without Rule conditions, and 9-to-10-year-olds attributed lower ability and fairness to the Change with Rule condition compared to the Change without Rule condition. These findings suggest that learning about policies regarding marginalized group representation might lead children as young as 9-years-old to negatively evaluate these groups' competencies and perceive these policies as unfair.

Source:

University of Chicago

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Co-authors:

Sandy Lopez