Feeling Lucky? Kids Will Like You

It’s time lucky people joined candy, cake, and Christmas on the list of things that the young tend to prefer.

According to psychologists at Harvard and Stanford, children between the ages of five and seven demonstrate a predilection for people who have seen their lives graced with good fortune as compared to those who have suffered from poor luck. Furthermore, this tendency is not limited to individuals, but rather, is applied to larger groups encompassing those individuals.

This research may shed light on the origins of social prejudices.

“Children prefer the lucky to the unlucky,” said Kristina R. Olson, a Harvard graduate student in psychology and a co-author of the study. “They extend that preference beyond the individual to entire social groups.”

The tendency towards extension is particularly significant, according to Olson, because it may be key to understanding certain stubborn social inequities­ and their possible roots in the perceptions of the young.

“We’re actually interested in a broader question of how prejudicing and stereotyping and things like that start,” she said. “It’s most helpful to study kids, because it helps you to focus on how and when things like this come on line.”

Olson’s study, co-authored by Berkman professor of psychology Elizabeth S. Spelke ’71, Cabot professor of social ethics in psychology Mahzarin Banaji, and Stanford professor of psychology Carol S. Dweck, was conducted in two parts.

The first part presented the study subjects with descriptions of individuals and asked them to rate their affinity for them on a 1-6 scale.

The average rating for “beneficiaries of uncontrollable good events” was a 4.8, while the average rating for “victims of uncontrollable bad events” was a smaller 3.2.

The second part involved two five-person groups. Children were given background stories on three members of each group. From these stories, the groups were identifiable as being comprised of either lucky or unlucky people.

The children’s feelings about unfamiliar members of each group were then gauged. Despite the lack of direct description regarding the new individuals, the preferences were markedly in favor of people from the “lucky” group.