How social status influences our understanding of others’ mental states

Social status is related to children's responses to third-person inequalities

The current study investigated how children's experiences with advantaged or disadvantaged status within one inequality influence their responses to other inequalities that they are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by. Children (N = 161; 3-8 years of age; 80 girls and 81 boys; sampling population: 70% White, 16% African American, 10% Latine, and 4% Asian American; middle-income families) were first randomly assigned to an advantaged or disadvantaged status within a first-person, gender-based inequality and were then assessed on their allocations of new resources and judgments of rectifying, equal, and perpetuating allocations in response to a separate third-person, economic-based inequality between two other recipients. We found that children who were advantaged by the first-person inequality were less likely to rectify the third-person inequality, especially if they focused on the advantaged recipient's perspective when reasoning about their allocation. Younger advantaged children were also less likely to judge rectifying the third-party inequality as fair. Taken together, these results demonstrate how children's experiences with inequalities inform their responses to other third-person inequalities and conceptions of fairness more broadly.

The effect of group status on children's hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs

Members of advantaged groups are more likely than members of disadvantaged groups to think, feel, and behave in ways that reinforce their group's position within the hierarchy. This study examined how children's status within a group-based hierarchy shapes their beliefs about the hierarchy and the groups that comprise it in ways that reinforce the hierarchy. To do this, we randomly assigned children (4-8 years; N = 123; 75 female, 48 male; 21 Asian, 9 Black, 21 Latino/a, 1 Middle-Eastern/North-African, 14 multiracial, 41 White, 16 not-specified) to novel groups that differed in social status (advantaged, disadvantaged, neutral third-party) and assessed their beliefs about the hierarchy. Across five separate assessments, advantaged-group children were more likely to judge the hierarchy to be fair, generalizable, and wrong to challenge and were more likely to hold biased intergroup attitudes and exclude disadvantaged group members. In addition, with age, children in both the advantaged- and disadvantaged-groups became more likely to see membership in their own group as inherited, while at the same time expecting group-relevant behaviors to be determined more by the environment. With age, children also judged the hierarchy to be more unfair and expected the hierarchy to generalize across contexts. These findings provide novel insights into how children's position within hierarchies can contribute to the formation of hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: A total of 123 4-8-year-olds were assigned to advantaged, disadvantaged, and third-party groups within a hierarchy and were assessed on seven hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs about the hierarchy. Advantaged children were more likely to say the hierarchy was fair, generalizable, and wrong to challenge and to hold intergroup biases favoring advantaged group members. With age, advantaged- and disadvantaged-group children held more essentialist beliefs about membership in their own group, but not the behaviors associated with their group. Results suggest that advantaged group status can shape how children perceive and respond to the hierarchies they are embedded within.

Distrust as a form of inequality

Navigating social hierarchies is a ubiquitous aspect of human life. Social status shapes our thoughts, feelings, and actions toward others in various ways. However, it remains unclear how trust is conferred within hierarchies and how status-related cues are used when resources are on the line. This research fills this knowledge gap by examining how ascribed, consensus-based status appearance, and perceived status appearance impact investment decisions for high- and low-status partners during a Trust Game. In a series of pre-registered experiments, we examined the degree to which participants trusted unfamiliar others with financial investments when the only available information about that person was their socioeconomic status (SES). In Study 1, SES was ascribed. Studies 2 and 3 conveyed SES with visual antecedents (clothing). Across all three experiments, participants trusted high SES partners more than low SES partners. In addition, subjective perceptions of status based on visual cues were a stronger predictor of trust than consensus-based status judgments. This work highlights a high status-trust bias for decisions where an individual's money is on the line. In addition, high-status trust bias may occur simply because of an individual's subjective assumptions about another's rank.

Prospective associations between mothers' and fathers' parenting styles and adolescents' moral values: Stability and specificity by parent style and adolescent gender

This study coordinates moral value development in adolescence, parenting style, and gender with issues of stability and specificity. The primary research question asked whether parenting styles of mothers and fathers influence the development of adolescent moral values, and secondary research questions asked whether adolescent moral values were stable and whether gender moderated predictive relations of parenting styles and adolescent moral values. At 14 and 18 years, a sample of 246 adolescents completed the Sociomoral Reflection Objective Measure - Short Form; at 14 years, mothers and fathers self-reported their parenting styles using the Parental Authority Questionnaire. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses established a 2-factor model of adolescent moral values across the two ages: Life and Social Contract captured prosocial aspects of morality that are left to individual choice, and Law and Social Order captured acts that are legally or morally obligatory for individuals to perform. Structural equation modeling investigated relations between parental parenting styles and the two adolescent moral value factors, with adolescent age, gender, and family SES as covariates. Both moral values factors had high stabilities across the 4-year period. Mothers' authoritarian parenting at 14 years, but not their authoritative or permissive parenting, negatively predicted Life and Social Contract moral values, but not Law and Social Order, in adolescents at 18 years, more so for boys. Fathers' parenting styles did not predict adolescents' moral values at 18 years. Girls and adolescents from higher-SES families had higher Life and Social Contract moral values at 14 years; boys experienced more increases in Life and Social Contract moral values from 14 to 18 years than girls. Stability and parental predictive validity of moral values for adolescence are discussed.

A study on the use of mental state terms in natural contexts of Chinese children aged 3 to 6 years

Chinese children's mental state terms were studied in a sample of 79 Chinese mother-child pairs (with children aged 3-6 years). Children's mental state term categories were calculated according to age, gender, and context as well as socioeconomic status (SES) variations. The study found that there were no significant age or gender differences in the Chinese children's mental state terms use during the 3- to 6-year stage and that the Chinese children's perception, disposition, and cognition terms were highly dependent on the use of particular words: "see" "like" and "know". After removing the highly dependent word "know," children's cognition terms showed significant age differences. Further research on disposition terms showed that with age negative terms displayed an increasing trend. In addition, the use of Chinese children's mental state terms was closely related to specific contexts. For example, references to volition occurred most often in the context of drawing, whereas references to cognition occurred when playing with blocks. Meanwhile, disposition terms were maintained at a minimum frequency in all contexts, although the picture book used in the reading context was embedded with many disposition cues. Moreover, there was no significant difference in the mental state terms of children aged 3 to 6 years with high and low SES. Furthermore, in addition to perception terms, mothers' mental state terms were significantly and positively related to children's mental state terms of the same type. These findings provide evidence for the developmental pattern of mentalization development and appropriate education for Chinese children aged 3 to 6 years.

Challenging the White = Neutral Framework in Psychology

In the United States, White samples are often portrayed as if their racial identities were inconsequential to their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and research findings derived from White samples are often portrayed as if they were generalizable to all humans. We argue that these and other practices are rooted in a "White = neutral" framework (i.e., the conceptualization of White samples as nonracial). First, we review existing data and present some new data to highlight the scope of the White = neutral framework. Second, we integrate research from across psychological science to argue that the continued use of the White = neutral framework will prevent psychology from becoming a truly objective and inclusive science for at least three reasons: (a) Research with White samples will be valued over research with samples of color, (b) norms that maintain White neutrality will remain unchallenged, and (c) the role of White identity in psychological processes will remain underspecified and underexamined. Third, we provide recommendations for how to move beyond the White = neutral framework in hopes of encouraging all psychological scientists to move toward a White ≠ neutral framework in which all samples are identified for the unique and diverse perspectives that they bring to the world.

Children's thinking about group-based social hierarchies

Wealth, power, and status are distributed unevenly across social groups. A surge of recent research reveals that people being recognizing, representing, and reasoning about group-based patterns of inequity during the first years of life. We first synthesize recent research on what children learn about group-based social hierarchies as well as how this learning occurs. We then discuss how children not only learn about societal structures but become active participants in them. Studying the origins and development of children's thoughts and behavior regarding group-based social hierarchies provides valuable insight into how systems of inequity are perpetuated across generations and how intergroup biases related to wealth, power, and status may be mitigated and reshaped early in development.

Household clutter and crowding constrain associations between maternal sensitivity and child theory of mind

Social interactions between parents and children are important for developing theory of mind, but these may be disrupted by aspects of the proximal home environment. The current study observed maternal sensitivity and its associations with child theory of mind and the housing environment (index by clutter and crowding) in a sample of mothers and their 3.5-year-old twins (N = 250 children). Maternal sensitivity and housing environment were measured from experimenter report and child theory of mind was measured through behavioural tasks. Results show that the association between maternal sensitivity and child theory of mind was moderated by the housing environment, where the positive associations between maternal sensitivity and child theory of mind were only observed at lower levels of clutter and crowding in the housing environment. Additional contextual variables and processes are discussed.

Moral Development in Adolescence

This article provides a selective review of research on moral development in adolescence during the past decade. We begin with introducing key concepts and reviewing critical theoretical advances in the field of adolescent moral development. This includes integrative models to the developmental study of morality and dynamic socialization models of moral development. Next, related major empirical findings are presented on moral emotion-behavior links, morality in intergroup contexts, and the socialization of moral development. Next, methodological innovations are presented, including new techniques to assess and analyze moral emotions and moral behaviors. We conclude by pointing to promising future directions for moral development research and practices aimed at promoting ethical growth and civic responsibility in adolescents around the globe.

Cooperation with partners of differing social experience: An fNIRS-based hyperscanning study

Previous studies have shown the brain synchronization of all team members while completing a collaborative task. Moreover, this effect is influenced by a team's compositional elements, such as gender (opposite or same) or relationships (i.e., friends, lovers, or strangers) among team members. However, whether interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) is affected by team members' experience, as well as the temporal dynamics of such brain synchronization, remains to be investigated. In the current study, we combined behavioral methods and functional near-infrared spectroscopy-based hyperscanning to examine the effect of member experience on team cooperation by an adopted continuous joint drawing task with 21 student-student dyads (S-S dyads) and 22 teacher-student dyads (T-S dyads). The results revealed that team members with differing experiences (T-S dyads) perform better than those with similar ones (S-S dyads). Moreover, we observed IBS in the left frontopolar region (channel 11). However, we did not observe significant changes of the task-related IBS across time. Besides, IBS was negatively correlated with the participants' behavioral performance. Our findings demonstrate the importance of social experience in teamwork in the real world and suggest a possible mechanism for cooperation from a temporal and spatial perspective.

Children's group identity is related to their assessment of fair and unfair advantages

Unfair advantages can be created either intentionally (e.g., cheating) or unintentionally (e.g., unintended benefit). Little is known regarding how children evaluate different types of advantages in situations where group identity and group membership are made salient. To investigate how children's group identity influences their evaluations and attribution of intentions in intergroup contexts, children were presented with three hypothetical advantages (unintentionally unfair, intentionally unfair, and fair) in a competitive context created by either an in-group member or an out-group member. Children (N = 120) were 4-6 years of age (n = 59; M_age = 5.29 years) and 7-10 years of age (n = 61; M_age = 8.34 years), including 64 girls and 56 boys. Participants were 67% European American, 18% African American, 11% Asian American, and 4% Hispanic. All participants were assigned to one of two teams in a contest in order to create an in-group/out-group manipulation prior to their evaluation of the actions. Out-group members viewed unintentional unfair and fair advantages as less acceptable than in-group members, but in-group and out-group members were equally negative in their assessment of an intentional transgression. When reasoning about unintentional and intentional unfair advantages, older children referenced the intentions of the advantage creator to justify their decisions more than younger children, whereas younger children reasoned about the impact of the behavior on their team more than older children. These novel findings shed light on developmental and social factors influencing children's understanding of fairness and intentionality in everyday contexts.

Social sampling: Children track social choices to reason about status hierarchies

We tested whether preschool-aged children (N = 280) track an agents' choices of individuals from novel social groups (i.e., social choices) to infer an agent's social preferences and the social status of the groups. Across experiments, children saw a box containing 2 groups (red and blue toy cats). In Experiment 1, children were randomly assigned to Social Selection in which items were described as "friends," or to Object Selection in which items were described as "toys." Within each selection type, the agent selected 5 items from either a numerically common group (82% of box; selections appearing random) or a numerically rare group (18% of box; selections violating random sampling). After watching these selections, children were asked who the agent would play with among 3 individuals: 1 from the selected group, 1 from the unselected group, or 1 from a novel group. Only participants who viewed Social Selection of a numerically rare group predicted that the agent would select an individual from that group in the future. These participants also said an individual from the selected group was the "leader." Subsequent experiments further probed the Social Selection findings. Children's reasoning depended on the agent actively selecting the friends (Experiment 2), and children thought a member of the rare selected group was the leader, but not the "helper" (Experiment 3). These results illustrate that children track an agent's positive social choices to reason about that agent's social preferences and to infer the status (likelihood of being a leader) of novel social groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

How economic inequality affects prosocial behavior in children across development

Research has linked economically unequal environments to lower prosocial behavior in adults. However, we know little about how inequality affects children's prosociality. Here, 4- to 9-year-old children (N = 128) played a series of games with several puppets where points were awarded. The distribution of points was characterized by either high inequality or low inequality. Children's donation behavior (i.e., the number of stickers they donated to a poor child), resource division behavior (i.e., how they divided extra points among poor and rich puppets), and fairness perceptions (i.e., how fair they perceived the game to be) were measured in response. Although the experimental manipulation of inequality did not affect children's donations, exploratory analyses revealed that higher inequality in children's home suburb was linked to lower donation rates. Furthermore, with age, children distributed points with increasing concern for poorer individuals, and negative judgments of the inequality were linked to distributing resources to poorer individuals. Here we present the first comprehensive analysis of children's prosocial reactions to high and low inequality across development.

A Cooperation Advantage for Theory of Mind in Children and Adults

Three studies test whether people engage in mental state reasoning or theory of mind (ToM) differently across two fundamental social contexts: cooperation and competition. Study 1 examines how children with an emerging understanding of false beliefs deploy ToM across these contexts. We find that young preschool children are better able to plant false beliefs in others' minds in a cooperative versus competitive context; this difference does not emerge for other cognitive capacities tested (e.g., executive functioning, memory). Studies 2a and 2b reveal the same systematic difference in adults' ToM for cooperation and competition, even after accounting for relevant predictors (e.g., preference for a task condition, feelings about deception). Together, these findings provide initial evidence for enhanced ToM for cooperation versus competition in early development and also adulthood.

Children's evaluations of individually and structurally based inequalities: The role of status

Social inequalities limit important opportunities and resources for members of marginalized and disadvantaged groups. Understanding the origins of how children construct their understanding of social inequalities in the context of their everyday peer interactions has the potential to yield novel insights into when-and how-individuals respond to different types of social inequalities. The present study examined whether children (N = 176; 3- to 8-years-old; 52% female, 48% male; 70% European American, 16% African American, 10% Latinx, and 4% Asian American; middle-income backgrounds) differentiate between structurally based inequalities (e.g., based on gender) and individually based inequalities (e.g., based on merit). Children were randomly assigned to a group that received more (advantaged) or fewer (disadvantaged) resources than another group due to either their groups' meritorious performance on a task or the gender biases of the peer in charge of allocating resources. Overall, children evaluated structurally based inequalities to be more unfair and worthy of rectification than individually based inequalities, and disadvantaged children were more likely to view inequalities to be wrong and act to rectify them compared to advantaged children. With age, advantaged children became more likely to rectify the inequalities and judge perpetuating allocations to be unfair. Yet, the majority of children allocated equally in response to both types of inequality. The findings generated novel evidence regarding how children evaluate and respond to individually and structurally based inequalities, and how children's own status within the inequality informs these responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Young children and adults associate social power with indifference to others' needs

In hierarchical societies, what do we expect from people at the top? Early in life, children use horizontal relationships (e.g., affiliation) to predict selectivity in others' prosocial behavior. But it is unknown whether children also view asymmetries in prosocial behavior as characteristic of vertical relationships (e.g., differences in social power). In two experiments, we investigated 4- to 7-year-old children's and adults' (N = 192) intuitions about links among relative authority status, helpful action, and unhelpful inaction. In Experiment 1, participants at all ages viewed a character who chose not to help another person as holding a position of authority over them; participants also viewed this unhelpful character as being less nice than the person in need. However, no age group made consistent inferences about the relative authority of a helper and a helpee. In Experiment 2, children had mixed intuitions when separately predicting whether high- and low-authority characters would be helpful in the future. However, older children and adults consistently indicated that a subordinate would be more likely than an authority to help a third party. These findings establish that children's social theories include expectations for links between power and prosociality by at least the preschool years. Whereas some judgments in this domain are stable from 4 years of age onward, others emerge gradually. Whether consistent responses occurred early or only later in development, however, all measures converged on a single intuition: People more easily associate authority with indifference to others' needs.

Cortical temporal hierarchy is immature in middle childhood

The development of successful social-cognitive abilities requires one to track, accumulate, and integrate knowledge of other people's mental states across time. Regions of the brain differ in their temporal scale (i.e., a cortical temporal hierarchy) and those receptive to long temporal windows may facilitate social-cognitive abilities; however, the cortical development of long timescale processing remains to be investigated. The current study utilized naturalistic viewing to examine cortical development of long timescale processing and its relation to social-cognitive abilities in middle childhood - a time of expanding social spheres and increasing social-cognitive abilities. We found that, compared to adults, children exhibited reduced low-frequency power in the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and reduced specialization for long timescale processing within the TPJ and other regions broadly implicated in the default mode network and higher-order visual processing. Further, specialization for long timescales within the right dorsal medial prefrontal cortex became more 'adult-like' as a function of children's comprehension of character mental states. These results suggest that cortical temporal hierarchy in middle childhood is immature and may be important for an accurate representation of complex naturalistic social stimuli during this age.

Social Mindfulness Shown by Individuals With Higher Status Is More Pronounced in Our Brain: ERP Evidence

"Social mindfulness" refers to being thoughtful of others and considering their needs before making decisions, and can be characterized by low-cost and subtle gestures. The present study compared the behavioral and neural responses triggered by observing others' socially mindful/unmindful choices and how these responses were modulated by the social status of the agency. At the behavioral level, observing socially mindful choices made observers feel better, rate the actors as more likable, and behave more cooperatively than did observing socially unmindful choices. Analysis of event-related potentials in the brain revealed that compared with socially unmindful choices, mindful choices elicited more negative feedback-related negativity (FRN). Notably, while this effect of social mindfulness was only significant when the actor's social status was medium and high, it was undetectable when the actor's social status was low. These results demonstrate that the social mindfulness of others can be rapidly detected and processed, as reflected by FRN, even though it does not seem to receive further, more elaborate evaluation. These findings indicated that low-cost cooperative behaviors such as social mindfulness can also be detected and appreciated by our brain, which may result in better mood and more cooperative behaviors in the perceivers. Besides, the perception of social mindfulness is sensitive to important social information, such as social status.

Lying, negligence, or lack of knowledge? Children's intention-based moral reasoning about resource claims

In a hidden inequality context, resource allocators and resource recipients are unaware that an unknowingly advantaged recipient possesses resources. The present study presented children aged 3-13 years (N = 121) with a hidden inequality vignette involving an accidental transgression in which one resource claimant, who unknowingly possessed more resources than another claimant, made an "unintentional false claim" to resources. This unintentional false claim resulted in depriving another recipient of needed resources. Results revealed that children's ability to accurately identify the claimant's intentions was related to how they evaluated and reasoned about resource claims, a previously understudied aspect of resource allocation contexts. Children's attributions of intentions to the accidental transgressor mediated the relationship between age and evaluations of the accidental transgression and the relationship between age and assignment of punishment to the accidental transgressor. With age, children who negatively evaluated the unintentional false claim shifted from reasoning about lying to a focus on negligence on the part of the unintentional false claimant. This shift reflects an increasing understanding of the accidental transgressor's benign intentions. These findings highlight how mental state knowledge and moral reasoning inform children's comprehension of resource allocation contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A Developmental Perspective on the Origins of Morality in Infancy and Early Childhood

Key constituents of morality emerge during the first 4 years of life. Recent research with infants and toddlers holds a promise to explain the origins of human morality. This article takes a constructivist approach to the acquisition of morality, and makes three main proposals. First, research on moral development needs an explicit definition of morality. Definitions are crucial for scholarly communication and for settling empirical questions. Second, researchers would benefit from eschewing the dichotomy between innate and learned explanations of morality. Based on work on developmental biology, we propose that all developmental transitions involve both genetic and environmental factors. Third, attention is needed to developmental changes, alongside continuities, in the development of morality from infancy through childhood. Although infants and toddlers show behaviors that resemble the morally relevant behaviors of older children and adults, they do not judge acts as morally right or wrong until later in childhood. We illustrate these points by discussing the development of two phenomena central to morality: Orientations toward helping others and developing concepts of social equality. We assert that a constructivist approach will help to bridge research on infants and toddlers with research on moral developmental later in childhood and into adulthood.