Is the inherence heuristic needed to understand system-justifying tendencies among children?

Abstract

Evidence that children's system-justifying preferences track the extent of group-based status differences is consistent with the inherence heuristic account. However, evidence that children are inferring inherence per se, or that such inferences are the cause of system-justifying preferences, is missing. We note that, until direct evidence of the inherence heuristic is available, alternative models should not be ignored.