Children's Social Category-based Giving and Its Correlates: Expectations and Preferences

Do young children use information about gender and race to guide their prosocial gestures, and to what extent is children's selective prosociality related to other intergroup phenomena? Two studies tested 3- to 5-year-old children's allocation of resources to, social preferences for, and expectations about the behaviors of unfamiliar people who varied by gender or race. In both studies, a predominantly White sample of participants gave more resources to same-gender and White children than to other-gender and Black children, respectively. Correlational analyses showed that participants' gender-based giving was related to their social preferences for, and expectations about receiving help from, children who matched their gender. Race-based giving was only related to participants' expectations that they would be more likely to receive help from White than from Black children. The findings show that gender and race can guide children's resource distribution behavior and also provide insight into factors underlying children's allocation decisions.