Prior research has demonstrated that children’s fairness behaviors are a reflection of both social and cognitive development (Blake & McAuliffe, 2011; Blake, McAuliffe, & Warneken, 2014). While children at young ages strictly endorse equality, even when equality is costly, children integrate concerns related to need and merit by seven years of age (Kienbaum & Wilkening, 2009; Rizzo & Killen, 2016). However, there is recent work demonstrating that kids much younger than seven and even infants have some understanding of merit (Kannigiesser & Warneken, 2012; Kenward & Dahl, 2011; Sloane, Baillargeon, & Premack, 2018). Furthermore, children (ages 3-10) increasingly prioritize effort over outcome when there is an inconsistency between effort and product when comparing two peers (Noh, D’Esterre, & Killen, 2019). These studies seek to build on prior literature that suggests children integrate concerns over effort when evaluating fairness.
While it seems that merit is highly important to children, it is possible to think of many examples in the real world where there seems to be rewards for little effort but yet those who are working hard see few rewards. Despite this reality, children seem to highlight concerns for fairness more than other domains such as societal norms (Killen & Smetana, 2015). However, children also show evidence in early to middle childhood that they integrate concern’s about pre-existing inequality (Li, Spitzer, & Olson, 2014; Baumard, Mascaro, & Chevallier, 2012). These converging concerns for both pre-existing inequality and effort lay the foundation for potentially conflicting fairness concerns. That is, there are examples in every day life where there are pre-existing beliefs about certain social group, or even individuals, in which their hard work and effort becomes less important in the context of these pre-existing beliefs. In this, there is some evidence in which children seem to be conflicted about the right thing to do. In some work, children show in-group favoritism (Renno & Shutts, 2015; McGillicuddy-De Lisi, Daly, & Neal, 2006), while other work shows that children rectify inequalities for disadvantaged groups regardless of their own group status (Elenbaas & Killen, 2016). Thus, there is a need for more work understanding the intersection between children’s preexisting beliefs about a certain group’s deservedness and effort. Children’s considerations of these factors may lay the foundation for stereotypic beliefs that have real consequences later in life and potentially even in childhood.
Children’s fairness concerns have a wide range of applications but hold especially interesting relevance for perceptions of academic ability and achievement. As soon as children enter formal schooling, they exhibit biases related to who will and how to achieve. For example, as early as first grade, children demonstrate beliefs that math is for boys as well as the belief that boys are geniuses (Cvencek, Greenwald, & Meltzoff, 2011; Bian, Leslie, & Cimpian, 2017). This evidence of academic stereotypes at young ages reflects children’s ability to flexibly integrate group information into their decision-making framework almost as soon as they enter formal schooling.
These early beliefs may have a range of consequences for both the disadvantaged groups (i.e. females) as well as the individual. For example, if children already integrate beliefs about who is best able to achieve, they may themselves believe they are not able to achieve because they are either not a member of the privileged group or because they do not align with the abilities that their group should possess. This may be reflected by their motivational framework (also referred to achievement mindsets) defined as beliefs, attributions and attitudes toward challenge (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). This is seen around these same time as stereotypical beliefs emerge with poorer achievement related to children’ beliefs (achievement mindsets) about whether ability is a fixed, innate trait rather than one that is malleable and related to effort (Park, Gunderson, Tsukayama, Levine, & Beilock, 2016; Gunderson, Park, Maloney, Beilock, & Levine, 2018). Math is especially vulnerable to fixed beliefs, with children and adults viewing it as a more fixed domain than reading both for children and adults (Gunderson, Hamdan, Sorhagen, & D’Esterre, 2017). Further, here is an increasing body of math research demonstrating negative relations between socio-emotional factors (i.e., anxiety, self-concept and stereotypes), later achievement, and participation (Ashcraft, M. H., & Krause, J. A., 2007).
Interestingly, as discussed previously, when we consider how children evaluate work in a non-academic domain, children seem to prioritize effort while sometimes showing in-group favoritism. However, one concrete example where effort does not seem to be a paramount concern is the example of these academic stereotypes favoring males in which they are also considered geniuses, rather than hard-workers. When evaluating the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), it is clear that many disparities exist, with lower participation and career attainment from women (NSF, 2017). This gap is especially jarring when considering a recent meta-analysis including data from almost 2 million students in elementary, high school, and college which found that girls earn better grades than boys is STEM subjects at all ages (O’Dea, Lagisz, Jennions, & Nakagawa, 2018). Math and spatial skills have been highlighted as domains highly related to success and participation in STEM (Newcombe, 2010). While most literature in these domains has focused on cognitive factors, expanding this research to include more studies of social factors, especially related to gender stereotypes, is vital to provide a foundation for future interventions aimed at mitigating disparities in STEM.
The following studies seek to address a present gap in the literature aimed at understanding how children reflect academic stereotypes in their evaluations of uneven resource distributions related to fixed-ability versus effort. That is, it is clear that children integrate both norms and concerns for effort into their decisions about fairness, but to my knowledge there is no literature demonstrating how this is related to stereotypes about academics. Given the large body of work showing how beliefs and attitudes about academics have real consequences for later success, it is imperative that we understand possible mechanisms for the acceptance and pervasion of these beliefs. This is especially true for STEM domains, particularly math, where we see a clear asymmetry between ability and representation later in life, as well as consequences related to beliefs as early as elementary school.
Research Questions
1. Do children judge resource allocations differentially based on perceptions of ability versus effort (as related to an academic task)?
2. How do these perceptions vary based on academic domain (i.e. math versus reading)?
3. How do these domain specific perceptions interact with gender?
a. Do these perceptions align with common gender stereotypes such as math=male?
Study 1
Aims
1. Children will judge the unequal distribution of rewards to an agent who worked really hard at a math/reading task versus an agent who was innately gifted in the matched domain (a genius) who was also doing the same task, regardless of the outcome of both agents. I am interested in the implications of this task for potential academic outcomes and as such only included conditions for these two academic domains because of the natural comparison between the two domains found in the stereotype literature (e.g. Cvencek et al., 2013; Gunderson et al., 2017).
2. Children will complete measures for both math and reading domains to better understand the domain-specificity of attitudes about inequity.
3. Additionally, as an exploratory measure, children will give math and reading awards to one of the agents. This will attempt to get at the asymmetry between perceptions in a specific instance versus the relation of that instance to the person as a whole.
Hypotheses
1. Children will view unequal distributions of rewards as fair when the hardworking agent benefits from the unequal distribution but not when the genius does.
2. While children will be more likely to privilege hard work than fixed ability in both domains, they will be more likely to privilege hard work for reading.
3a. If children believe success in a domain is related to a fixed trait, they will give the award
to the genius.
3b. Alternatively, if children view this moment as more relevant to effort than domain-specific ability, as mediated be their own fixed mindset, they will give the award to the award to the hard worker.
Design
Population: 148 5-6 and 9-10 year-olds. Previous literature has demonstrated a clear developmental shift between these two age ranges therein making them interesting to examine for developmental shifts (e.g. Blake, McAuliffe, & Warneken, 2014). Additionally, children are just entering formal school in the first age range and therefore may make very different judgements about unequal reward distribution as it relates to academic domains than their older peers.
Condition
Hard worker rewarded Genius rewarded
5-6 year-olds N=38 N=38
9-10 year-olds N=38 N=38
Methods: Children will hear short vignettes/ see short videos about one student who worked really hard at a math problem/reading a story or a student who is working on the same math/reading problem but is a math/reading genius (student’s genders will be matched to participant). Following this, a third party will award two stickers to either the hard-working student or the genius and one sticker to the other child. Following this scene children will complete an inequality judgement task (modeled after Elenbaas & Killen, 2016) in which they are asked how okay or not okay the unequal distribution is. Additionally, they will be asked why they think the distribution is okay or not okay. These responses will be coded for focus on fixed ability, focus on hard-work, emphasis on both, focus on equality concerns or focus on teacher (knowledge, respect, etc.). Following this, children will complete a task in which they have one math/reading award to give and will be asked which child to give it to. Children will complete two blocks of vignettes and questions, one math and one reading, in counterbalanced order.
Genius rewarded example vignette: “This is Alexander/Alexandra, and this is Tony/Tara (point to cartoon images). They are two students who had to play a difficult math game. Alexander is a math genius and Tony worked hard on the game. Their teacher had three stickers to give out as rewards for playing the game. The teacher gave two to Alexander because he is a math genius and one to Tony because he worked hard.”
Hard-worker rewarded example vignette: “This is Alexander/Alexandra, and this is Tony/Tara (point to cartoon images). They are two students who had to play a difficult math game. Alexander is a math genius and Tony worked hard on the game. Their teacher had three stickers to give out as rewards for playing the game. The teacher gave two to Tony because he worked hard and one to Alexander because he is a math genius.”
Motivational frameworks: Additionally, children will complete an academic mindset questionnaire (Gunderson et al., 2018). This questionnaire assesses motivational frameworks using questions about belief in the stability of intelligence and (e.g., “Imagine a kid who believes that you can get smarter and smarter all the time. How much do you agree with this kid?”).
Study 2
Aims
1. Extend results of study one to study the interaction of domain and gender on judgements of unequal distributions.
Hypotheses
1. Children will be more likely to endorse unequal distributions for a male math genius over a female who is hard working in math.
a. This flips the hypotheses for the first study but may provide a unique case in which being a genius is privileged following societal stereotypes that math is for boys, that math is more fixed ability and boys are geniuses.
2. In line with hypotheses for study one, children will be more okay with unequal distributions to hard workers over genius in the reading domain, regardless of which gender is the genius or hard-worker.
Design
Population: 200 5-6 and 9-10 year olds. 2: Gender of participant x 2: genius or hard-worker rewarded
Participant gender Condition
Genius rewarded Hard-worker reward
Female 25 5-6 year-olds
25 9-10 year-olds 25 5-6 year-olds
25 9-10 year-olds
Males 25 5-6 year-olds
25 9-10 year-olds 25 5-6 year-olds
25 9-10 year-olds
Methods: Overall design will match study one. The only manipulation will be that instead of children viewing gender matched pairs, children will see one boy and one girl. In half of the vignettes, the boy will be the hard-worker across domains and the girl will be the genius and for the other half of the vignettes, the girl will be the hard-worker and the boy will be the genius across domains. Children will now see four vignettes instead of two but the worker that is rewarded will be held constant. Follow-up measures will replicate study one and include inequality judgement, reasoning for inequality judgement and motivational framework questionnaire.
Genius rewarded vignette list: (1)Male character is math genius, female is math hard-worker, male is given more rewards; (2) Female is math genius, male is math hard-worker, female is given more rewards; (3)Male character is reading genius, female is reading hard-worker, male is given more rewards; (4) Female is reading genius, male is reading hard-worker, female is given more rewards.
Hard-worker rewarded vignette list: (1)Male character is math genius, female is math hard-worker, female is given more rewards; (2) Female is math genius, male is math hard-worker, male is given more rewards; (3)Male character is reading genius, female is reading hard-worker, female is given more rewards; (4) Female is reading genius, male is reading hard-worker, male is given more rewards.
Example genius rewarded vignette: This is Alexander, and this is Tara (point to cartoon images). They are two students who had to play a difficult math game. Alexander is a math genius and Tara worked hard on the game. Their teacher had three stickers to give out as rewards for playing the game. The teacher gave two to Alexander because he is a math genius and one to Tara because she worked hard.”
Hard-worker rewarded example vignette: “This is Alexander, and this is Tara (point to cartoon images). They are two students who had to play a difficult math game. Alexander is a math genius and Tara worked hard on the game. Their teacher had three stickers to give out as rewards for playing the game. The teacher gave two to Tara because she worked hard and one to Alexander because he is a math genius.”
Children will also complete a “Math-Male” Implicit Association Task (IAT), which requires children to rapidly sort words associated with math versus reading and male versus female on a computer. This task is designed to assess a child’s attitudes towards math and reading and has demonstrated gender differences as early as 1st grade (Cvencek, Meltzoff, & Greenwald, 2011; Hildebrand, Posid, Hymes, Moss-Racusin, & Cordes, in prep).