Work

Children’s social category-based giving and its correlates: Expectations and preferences.

Year: 2015

Type: article

Abstract: Do young children use information about gender and race to guide their prosocial gestures, and to what extent is children's selective prosociality related to other intergroup phenomena? Two studies tested 3- to 5-year-old children's allocation of resources to, social preferences for, and expectations about the behaviors of unfamiliar people who varied by gender or race. In both studies, a predominantly White sample of participants gave more resources to same-gender and White children than to other-gender and Black children, respectively. Correlational analyses showed that participants' gender-based giving was related to their social preferences for, and expectations about receiving help from, children who matched their gender. Race-based giving was only related to participants' expectations that they would be more likely to receive help from White than from Black children. The findings show that gender and race can guide children's resource distribution behavior and also provide insight into factors underlying children's allocation decisions.

Source: Developmental Psychology

DOI: 10.1037/a0038819

Authors: Maggie P. Renno, Kristin Shutts

Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison

Language: English

Topic: Child and Animal Learning Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: hybrid

Funders: John Templeton Foundation, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development