The Haves and Have-Nots: Infants Use Wealth to Guide Social Behavior and Evaluation

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. General 2024-09, Vol.153 (9), p.2239-2257
• Main Authors: Eason, Arianne E., Enright, Elizabeth A., Weng, Shimeng, Horton, Rachel O., Sitch, Miranda J., Sommerville, Jessica A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Babies; Cognition & reasoning; Decision Making; Economic Inequality; Economic Security; Experiments; Female; Human; Humans; Infant; Infant Behavior - physiology; Infant Behavior - psychology; Infant Development; Male; Social Behavior; Social Cognition; Socioeconomic Factors; Socioeconomic Status
• ISSN: 0096-3445; 1939-2222; 1939-2222
• DOI: 10.1037/xge0001567

Biases favoring the wealthy are ubiquitous, and they support and bolster vast resource inequalities across individuals and groups; yet, when these biases are acquired remains unknown. In Experiments 1 through 5 (Total N = 232), using multiple methods, we found that 14- to 18-month-old infants track individuals' wealth (Experiments 1-5), prefer and selectively help rich (vs. poor) individuals (Experiments 2 and 3), and negatively evaluate poor individuals (Experiments 4 and 5). In two subsequent experiments with 11- to 13-month-old infants (Total N = 65), however, we find no evidence of preferences for rich (vs. poor) individuals (Experiment 6) or differential evaluations of rich and poor people (Experiment 7). Together, these results demonstrate that in the second year of life, wealth emerges as a central and robust dimension of evaluation that guides social decision making. Public Significance Statement Despite the fact that people prefer more equitable societies and distributions of resources across individuals, biases favoring the wealthy emerge within the second year of life. When considering the steps necessary to reduce wealth inequality and ameliorate its negative consequences, our data reveal that early-emerging wealth-based biases manifest as behavioral preferences for rich people, which seem to stem from negative evaluations of poor people rather than positive evaluations of rich people. Thus, undoing wealth inequality requires changing the way that people think about and act toward poor individuals early in life and designing interactions, institutions, and social structures that push against the early-emerging negative attitudes and behaviors directed toward poor individuals.