Wealth, power, and status are distributed unevenly across social groups. A surge of recent
research reveals that people being recognizing, representing, and reasoning about group …

Research published in the special section documents how children's and adolescents'
awareness and sensitivity to group-level exclusion, inequality of opportunity, and broader …

Highlights•Evolved, early-developing relational representations and motives likely undergird
the social psychology of hierarchy.•Infants and young children form, represent, and …

Understanding the factors that shape the social landscape is essential for living in a group,
where dominant individuals often have greater control over and access to desired resources …

As part of their early “essentialist” intuitions, young children view intergroup differences as
reflecting groups' intrinsic natures. In the present study, we explore the nature and …

Social exclusion and inclusion from groups, as well as the distribution of resources, are
fundamental aspects of social life, and serve as sources of conflicts that bear on issues of …

Many people believe in equality of opportunity but overlook and minimize the structural
factors that shape social inequalities in the United States and around the world, such as …

Recent research has contributed to developmental scientists' understanding of how children
and adolescents reason about social class in relation to themselves, others, and their …

From an early age, children develop a strong sense of fairness and justice. Young children
share resources when they do not directly benefit personally, and evaluate transgressions …

This study examined how children's and adolescents' beliefs about the distribution of wealth
in society and the fairness of economic systems informed their behavior, judgments, and …