Young children's understanding of social class groups: family and community demographic variation

This study examined 5- to 6-year-old children's categorizations of and behaviors toward peers from different social classes. Participants were 193 children ( M age = 5.45 years, SD = 0.27; 102 boys, 91 girls) recruited from a diverse U.S. metropolitan area. Children completed a matching task using material cues (houses, cars, backpacks) and one-shot, third-party allocation and punishment tasks. Children successfully identified social class groups at a rate higher than chance and showed higher accuracy when identifying rich compared to poor peers. In allocation, children favored rich targets over poor targets, and this bias was associated with higher family income and lower parental education. Children punished both rich and poor peers above chance levels, and greater punishment was associated with higher family income, but not with target class. These findings show that early-school-age children can categorize others by social class using material cues and use these cues to guide their moral behavior toward others.