Interwealth Contact and Young Children's Concern for Equity

Abstract

This study examined young children's contact with individuals of high-wealth and low-wealth backgrounds and their behavior toward peers of these backgrounds in a resource distribution task. The sample included 72 ethnically diverse higher income children (M_age = 6.68 years, SD = 0.98 years). Contact with individuals of low-wealth backgrounds (interwealth contact) affected children's behavior indirectly, through social-cognitive reasoning processes. The more interwealth contact children reported, the more likely they were to reason about access to resources rather than their own wealth preferences in this context. This reasoning, in turn, was associated with more resources allocated to a low-wealth peer relative to a high-wealth peer. Thus, interwealth contact early in development was associated with more equitable peer interactions.